- Crackpot tech: Virtual worlds
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- Crackpot tech: Wireless power
- Crackpot tech: Pervasive computing
- Crackpot tech: Optical computing
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- Crackpot tech: Quantum cryptography redux
- Your turn: Predict the next big thing
February 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Crackpot tech: Virtual worlds
The likelihood of Second Life having a long-term impact on the enterprise may appear virtually nonexistent, but consider this: Education, collaboration, and networking -- three productivity mandates for today's enterprise -- are fast catching on in the virtual world.
Before laughing and glancing sideways at your well-worn copy of Snow Crash, know that even old-guard institutions such as Harvard University have a Second Life presence, with virtual campuses where learning, discussion, and content creation occur.
Dobbs Island, with tradeshow booths to the left and, in the distance, the amphitheatre where conferences are held.
Training, for one, has real ROI potential in Second Life, as virtual worlds expose participants to RL (real life) learning scenarios that would otherwise be too expensive or dangerous to explore. Take dealing with a pandemic flu, for example. Medical students are already tapping virtual worlds to learn how best to respond. No need to pay for a trip to a foreign country to learn language basics. Virtual immersive language study allows you to travel to worlds where only that language is spoken, with all signs and advertisements written in the language being learned.
Collaboration and networking are two other sweetspots for companies to make use of virtual worlds. Tech heavy hitters such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Dell, and Microsoft are already tapping Second Life as a platform for development, conferences, and forums. IBM, which has established a Business Center in Second Life, boasts nearly 4,000 employees with Second Life avatars to date, with about 1,000 routinely conducting company business inside Second Life.
But what of the many technologies already serving companies' collaboration, networking, and training needs? How can virtual worlds find a long-term place in the mix?
"The 3D aspects and the ability to put a whole group of people in the same 'space' at a distance, where everyone can hear everyone else as you would in a real hall or space, gives SL an advantage over other social networking systems, chat systems, or conference calls," says Todd Cochrane, of the Wellington Institute of Technology in New Zealand. "People seem to be more engaged."
Conference room designed by Todd Cochrane, where one can watch Windows Vista training clips (provided by ClipTraining.com).
And that is the immeasurable edge virtual worlds may have over traditional modes of training and collaboration: user engagement. Perhaps more so, as Generation Y grows up with virtual technologies such as Second Life.
Of course, anonymity, which people tend to prefer in the virtual world, hinders collaboration carryover into the real world. Moreover, plugging in to Second Life for business-grade collaboration has other detractors, such as quality of experience (SL is consistently slowing down and crashing for a variety of reasons), privacy (oftentimes, depending on the type of conversation, others can “hear” you), and security. But as the technology matures, these issues will no doubt be addressed.
Either way, crackpot or not, tapping virtual worlds such as Second Life in a corporate setting has already drawn significant interest.
“Once more we have the very strong feeling that [Second Life] will have a huge impact on business, society and our personal lives, although none of us can quite predict what that impact will be," Irving Wladawsky-Berger, chairman emeritus of the IBM Academy of Technology and visiting professor of engineering systems at MIT, wrote in a blog over a year ago. "It will be fascinating to see where this ride takes us in the future."
-- J. Peter Bruzzese
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Posted by Jason Snyder on February 18, 2008 03:08 AM
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I am Executive Director of the Association of Virtual Worlds and CEO of VRWorkplace, a virtual worlds for the enterprise consultancy. There is no question in my mind that virtual worlds will represent a very strong trend in the enterprise over the coming two years or so. In addition to Second Life, there are many other virtual worlds that are being used in the enterprise and the numbers grow daily. These range from web-based 3D virtual solutions requiring no download to others that do require download and offer incredibly detailed and rich virtual environments. Not all of them are prone to "crashing" or privacy concerns. Moreover, there's nothing that requires anonymity in a virtual world. That said, there is a qualitative difference between looking at someone's face on a web-cam or telephoning or emailing and spending time together in an immersive experience. Science supports the premise that the "feeling" of being physically together is replicated in a virtual world. Virtual worlds, therefore, present risk free (and fun) training environments, collaboration environments, and the perfect place for a "happy hour" among remote workers. Another aspect, something I call the "global hallway" -- the ability to replicate the serendipitous interactions we have with colleagues in a traditional workplace on-line in virtual worlds (i.e. running into your boss in the hallway.) Given that virtual togetherness feels real, are we not bound to use virtual worlds technology instead of air travel (at least to some extent)? If sitting together in a virtual space mimics in person working, are we not also headed in the direction of reduced corporate real estate spend? These two elements represent part of the ROI we've been looking for. If I could save 15% of your travel budget and 15% of your real estate spend, wouldn't you give virtual worlds a try? By the way, these concepts are new to most readers of this blog, but there's no chance that today's six year olds, who spend so much of their time playing on-line virtual penguins and collaborating together in that fashion, will not accept similar virtual collaboration methods once they enter the workforce.
Posted by: Dave Elchoness at February 19, 2008 08:21 AMWe already have various virtual worlds and varied applications for them. Yes, we all know that. A large number of seperate virtual worlds on different platforms, though, do not have the same appeal as the development of a unified virtual world platform for users in a 3-D Internet. Such a unified platform for 3-D Internet is referred to as the Metaverse.
I recommend taking a deeper read of Neal Stephenson's book "Snow Crash". Too many yet have too small a picture about this. Perhaps intentionally because some wish to compete against growingly popular platform with their comparitively smaller or unestablished VW softwares. They cannot keep up, therefore, they seek to pull down others and attack the dream which is becoming manifest.
Whether it is through Second Life or not, the vision still is for this one Metaverse. What we are heading toward the one virtual platform no matter if some will not awaken to this.
Your turn: The next big thing? From the far-fetched to the practical, we highlighted 12 technologies that have a history of riding the thin edge between harebrained and brilliant. Yet each has the potential to significantly shake up some aspect of the enterprise down the line.
So, bust out your crackpot meter and weigh in on whether these could-be pie-in-the-sky notions have a future by commenting on them on this blog. If you don't see a past or present contender you'd like to nominate and want to predict the next big crackpot thing... HAVE YOUR SAY HERE |
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