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IBM Finding Business Uses for Virtual World
jbrodkin writes "IBM has an unconventional take on virtual worlds for business use. Rather than strictly adhering to the laws of physics, IBM is letting its employees hold virtual meetings up in the air and under water. Employees are also being given wacky chores, such as kicking a giant boulder 1,400 kilometers. The virtual world, known as the Metaverse, has been in development for two years. Michael Ackerbauer of IBM says, 'I'd say more people are still finding it a novelty than a business tool. But ... if you build enough tools that they can use, they will come.'"
IBM seems to be following a trend of involvement in virtual worlds, which we have previously discussed.
"So Mr CEO, instead of letting the employees do something useful and making the shareholders some money you have them running around in pixel land kicking rocks? Even Microsoft and Zune makes more sense than that!"
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What uses?
snow crash is coming
Now we are finally seeing the full potential of the internet.. As imagined in 1992. Aww, the metaverse, full of wonder and gawdy Avatars bought from K-mart. Not unlike the abortion of a website that is Myspace.
I understand many Slashdotters love Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash, but I struggled to finish it, yawn. If I ever develop a fixation for sassy sixteen year old chicks, I'll revisit it.
fliptout userid 9***
"I kicked a boulder 1400 meters... and my boss told me to get serious, so I kicked him 1666 meters."
I wonder if their Metaverse has a Black Sun?
I guess that the boulder thing is kinda cool, but will it run Linux? Will SCO sue them if it will?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
What's the business use of holding meetings under virtual water?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
This was done, to some extent, in various text-based systems way back when. To what extent, I'm really not certain, but there were at least a few dedicated to that sort of thing. Just a little bit of history repeating.
World of IBMcraft. Every year, all employees get an expansion pack that lets them become a female elf with bigger boobs.
..."More like get a First Life roflburgers!" comments.
I know it's hard to believe, but business DOES transpire in virtual worlds, just like it does in (gasp!) Skype and (double gasp!) AIM.
hookers and grits.
"if you build enough tools that they can use, they will come"
I've seen so many failed projects happen simply because there was no interest, despite the fact there was plenty of capital investment.
I think things should start with an idea and a goal as opposed to "hey, lets spend a ton of time and energy making this rnadom thing and seeing what happens" It could work for science experiments and I think it's a great thing to do on the small scale, but why take 2 on business meetings in the virtual world?
How about their plans with second life? Has that fallen through? How is this any better?
We go into 3D worlds to provide a sense of space and dimensionality. Works great for games, or going on adventures in a contrived world. One must not forget that most communication, face-to-face, is non-verbal. 3D environments, in my opinion do not provide enough capability to show this facet of communication anywhere near proper. So how would this exactly provide a better place for meetings?
Maybe if it was a group of engineers that said "hey, this would be a really cool idea and help us communicate ideas faster and clearer" then I'd be more sold.
"But 20% of IBM employees are in India."
So? They are an INTERNATIONAL company and have been so for a long, long time. They have employees everywhere. Instead of INTERNATIONAL Business Machines they are often known as "I've Been Moved". As in, their employees get to keep their jobs only if they are willing to relocate. Where were you in the '80s and '90s? My bigger beef is that they sold off their Thinkpad line.
Now, if you want to take issue with Bank of AMERICA outsourcing way too much of their work to India...I'm with you.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
To be fair I absolutely love Snow Crash and think it was a great book. But come on IBM, get real! Why not invest in some of that nifty Cisco infrastructure that allows you to communicate with anyone anywhere? That seems a lot more productive than logging onto some virtual under water world so that everyone can conference with silly looking avatars.
Perhaps people should be more careful to use the word 'virtual' in an ICT sense. As if the 1's and 0's recorded on your harddrive don't exist, just because they represent imaginary worlds. That is nonsense.
At a critical moment, a miniscule group of electrons may ultimately determine whether a space shuttle makes it into earth orbit, or crashes into the ocean. A tiny magnetic area on your harddisk may determine whether you see a folder with your vacation pics on your desktop, or not. A single bit flipped in transit (due to some electromagnetic disturbance, or whatever) may cause an industrial robot to move a millimeter off the mark & junk the product passing underneath. What I'm trying to say: the environment may be imaginary for a great part, but these small groups of electrons, magnetic area's etc. are very real, and so is the effect they can have.
There's no such thing as a virtual meeting. With 10 participants, that's 10 people communicating with each other at the same time, like in any other real-world meeting. When you're dealing with bots, that's just you interacting with some company's ICT infrastructure, similar to shopping in a webstore or reading /.
Sure, the interface is radically different, but other than that it's just: communication. As creatures have done since the 1st braincell developed.
Do you think that my being faster has ANYTHING to do with my muscles, in this place?
You think thats AIR you're breathing?
AGAIN.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The locale, sounds, environment, and general "feel" of a meeting can really impact the way the participants think. We've seen studies here before about high ceilings encouraging open creative thought, while low ceilings encourages disciplined thought. Different kinds of locations can help make the people feel more relaxed, fun, or whatever. Try having conversations with people in second life in different locales and see what you think.
There's some precedent for this. The Disney Imagineering process involves separating development into separate meetings for the "dreaming" phase and "critic" phase. In the dreamer phase, any idea is ok to present, no matter how impractical. In the critic phase, you shoot holes in ideas. Disney would hold the dreamer meetings in open, comfy places; and hold the critic meetings in more enclosed, trashy places. These ideas work in the real world.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CcxKHjdTQKs
Dwight: "Second life doesn't have winners or losers."
Jim: "Oh, it has losers."
I'd be blown away if IBM managed to pull off a seriously big innovation with this, as free-thinking is not their strongpoint.
They are, however, pretty good at implementation, I think. Maybe.
expandfairuse.org
"But ... if you build enough tools that they can use, they will come."
Looks like someone's coming already!
-
". . . it's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw."
-- Calvin and Hobbes
So IBM finally found a way to invent magic pixie dust, a reality detector, the On Demand game show, a universal business adapter, the other IBM, and a method of defeating a giant sloth.
cool me want
Don't click the link, it's that goddamn myminicity thing again.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
What would be cool would be direct interaction with the brain to make it feel like participants are truly immersed in the virtual world--like what's in Arthur C. Clarke's The Light of Other Days. Hopefully one day...
Adopting the viewpoint of the article, the web itself is a metaverse in which the laws of physics are suspended. I find it a little funny though that the article doesn't seem to acknowledge this obvious fact: it is as if the article takes as given that the web is more real, less virtual, than the virtual worlds it discusses. Wow! epistemologically, it would seem, we have come a long way in some 10 short years!!
If its anything like this underwater "meeting", I'm sure the higher-ups would have a lot of explaining to do.
My guild comes up with some of the most interesting non-game related ideas while working on raids and whatnot. Vent makes for a very interactive situation.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
instead of letting the employees do something useful and making the shareholders some money you have them running around in pixel land kicking rocks?
I've been in plenty of meetings where that would have in fact been a lot more productive.
What if the developers of Taligent had kicked pixelated rocks instead of wasting a lot of time on something that never flew?
And frankly, I'd be happy if more than half of Congress's term consisted of kicking virtual rocks instead of passing more bad laws...
Basically, I'm pro Mock Rock.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I for one do *not* want my boss *anywhere near* my 2nd Life or whatever. Virtual meeting or no virtual meeting. Plain wouldn't happen. IBM job or no IBM job. I'd refuse to do it. And if forced to, would work within the virtual space to ensure the people who thought of it, damn sure know it's a bad idea after the first time.
Agreed on both counts. I love my Thinkpads, and try to keep them going so I don't have to get a Lenovo (they have much of a cheap feel to them). Also, I'm a Bank Of America customer and not exactly thrilled about their customer service outsourcing as well as their recent purchase of Lasalle Bank. Who wrote "How to shitcan customer service" and stuck it in the MBA manual?
Not meaning to be flame-bait here but this almost seems hypocritical.
The move IBM is making appears to provoke interest but as soon as you associate the EXACT same concept to SecondLife it gets snubbed.
How is this any different? Is it because they are creating it themselves? Can someone explain this?
"The locale, sounds, environment, and general "feel" of a meeting can really impact the way the participants think. We've seen studies here before about high ceilings encouraging open creative thought, while low ceilings encourages disciplined thought. Different kinds of locations can help make the people feel more relaxed, fun, or whatever. Try having conversations with people in second life in different locales and see what you think."
Actually in a way we have had real people in virtual environments in front of us for years.
...wonder if they eat at Cosa Nostra.
I may be wrong but IIRC IBM employees do have a dress code for second life. I believe for example they are not allowed dress up as animals.
Also the article seemed more like an advert. "Can't see each other" so they go onto virtual world? News flash you still can't see them, but you can be distracted more. Just buy a web cam.
I've pondered and pondered and pondered and yet I still can't find a viable business case for virtual worlds such as second life. I'm sure eventually one might be found, but under the current conditions, I just can't see any reason why a business would want to invest in this market until it becomes more mature.
Additionally, as a younger techie, I see companies consistently using this as a ploy to hire and maintain us. Thinking that if they look innovative enough, we may just want to stay with this company. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but if you give me competitive pay and good benefits, I'll probably stay.
Maybe, just maybe, IBM has a point, but the ability to kick a boulder 1,000 feet in a virtual world really doesn't translate into $$$'s.
Heck, this could do wonders for working from home. You could log into the virtual office on Mount Olympus, levitate to your workstation that is set up on an otherwise inaccessible crag, and do your work. I don't know about you, but I could write great code a mile above the Aegean Sea, with eagles hovering nearby. If people wanted to talk to me, they could always levitate on up to my aerie...as long as their level is high enough to have the Levitate spell, anyway. I'd still avoid meetings, though—I don't care whether they're held on top of clouds or caves full of glowing lava, meetings suck.
There would be some drawbacks, of course: for instance, my PBH would insist on an avatar that looks like Zeus. Ah, no problemo--I'll just hack the system so he looks like Goofy to everyone else...he'll never notice. While I'm at it, I'll make some...er...enhancements to the female avatars.
Seriously, I'm sorta serious. The tech is getting better, and gas prices ain't going down. Sooner rather than later, businesses are going to have to make the adjustment to letting those who have jobs that can be done from home do so.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Download a new one.
As metaverse is an experimental system, the boulder was merely created as part of our development work. We left the boulder in there figuring if we gave users a ball, they'd play with it. We wanted to encourage their exploration of this medium and thereby discover value. Right now, we're entirely focused on getting to the right questions about internal virtual worlds, rather than setting out to immediately seize upon business value.
So far, the boulder has primarily been used to teach employees how to interact and cooperate in the world, but we've been surprised how much it acts as a focal point for people in-world. People are drawn together to play with it, without any direct benefit or goal.
JS - IBM Metaverse devteam
The opinions expressed here are mine & not necessarily representative of IBM
IBM needs a way for its employees to interact beyond the teleconference and to connect across geographies. We've accepted that meetings are an inescapable part of our corporate culture, but we also recognize that shorter, focused meetings will make us more productive. Internal virtual worlds give "I've Been Meeting" (as some affectionately call us) the opportunity to improve on meetings themselves, and experiment with more interactive and effective approaches to them.
Perhaps the most interesting thing we've seen in this environment is that people can't multi-task easily while in a virtual meeting, if they don't give it their full attention they can literally get lost. Conversely, attendees have a shortened attention span, so meetings need to stay on topic and valuable.
JS - IBM Metaverse devteam
The opinions expressed here are mine & not necessarily representative of IBM
As long as they don't have anonymous cybersex during my presentation...
IBM doesn't necessarily follow trends. It invests in areas where it thinks it can make money. They've been on the Second Life bandwagon for a while now, and they've built quite a presence and have tutorials on DeveloperWorks about developing content for SecondLife using Rational Application Developer.
"Agreed on both counts. I love my Thinkpads, and try to keep them going so I don't have to get a Lenovo (they have much of a cheap feel to them). Also, I'm a Bank Of America customer and not exactly thrilled about their customer service outsourcing as well as their recent purchase of Lasalle Bank. Who wrote "How to shitcan customer service" and stuck it in the MBA manual?"
Well said. As a somewhat amusing ironic anecdote...I was shown the door by BofA at the beginning of the year, right after my contract had been extended into April. My manager tried to appease me with the tidbit that BofA dumps most of their contractors around that time for accounting purposes...can't let the stockholders know exactly what is going on. My wife now calls them "Bank of non-Americans".
I love my T
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Although I had heard about their Virtual Universe product and other things.