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Living on the Web
Anil Chopra
Friday, February 01, 2008
While everyone's busy figuring out how to incorporate all the neat
interactivity features provided by Web 2.0 technologies into their portals and
Intranets, there's another revolution brewing quietly in the background. We say
quietly because it's already been happening for a few years now, and has gained
significant momentum today to garner attention. It's the 3D virtual world space
out there on the Internet.
A virtual world, as the name suggests is a computer simulated 3D world
created on the Internet, where you can go, register yourself, and become a
'citizen'. It will provide you with all the facilities that you normally get in
the real world, such as a home, clothes, shopping and commercial complexes,
stadia, etc. In fact, the web is buzzing with lots of such virtual worlds.
You'll find a world for just about every age group, be it kids, teens, or adults
of different age groups. Each world has its own unique characteristics and 3D
realms where you can go and immerse yourself.
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| Anil Chopra, Editor |
There are also 3D chat communities, where you can register for free and
create a 3D world to invite your friends to come and chat with you in.
Several questions arise from all this. What do you really do in a virtual
world? Is it really worth your while as a busy professional to pay any attention
to it? Or is it something meant for kids or hobbyists who just want to
socialize? Let's understand this with a few examples.
Since the virtual worlds are 3D, they provide a completely immersive form of
interactivity. This very notion is grabbing the attention of many large
companies. IBM for instance, has actually setup a virtual business center in one
of the most popular virtual online worlds called Second Life. This world is
manned by actual IBM sales representatives 24x7, who interact with prospective
customers about IBM's products and services. They engage with customers just as
they would in the real world.
Similarly, there are many other software giants eying this space as well,
including the likes of Google. Plenty of international conferences are happening
to discuss the future prospects of such 3D worlds. They discuss over who can
benefit from such worlds, which applications and SDKs can be used to create
them, what kinds of policies to adopt for the people who live in them, etc. For
instance, one of the virtual worlds, called Active Worlds is in the business of
creating worlds for education institutes, where teachers and students can
interact.
All this makes one really wonder what will happen in the future. Who knows,
maybe one day we'll all go to virtual offices instead of real ones, have virtual
cabins, zip through virtual traffic, interact with each other virtually, but
will hopefully get paid in real so that our 'real' lives remain smooth and
comfortable!
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