I received an email recently in respect of the blog/article I wrote entitled “Second Life: The Campaign For Real Life“. It was from Chris Gayson and it read as follows:

Robin,

Disclosure-

Until very recently I was an AD with Ogilvy- the advertising agency of record to IBM. While I did not work on the IBM account during my years with the firm, I was exposed to some of IBM’s Second Life plans (nothing that isn’t publicly available knowledge). I also attended one private Linden Labs presentation.

Disclaimer-

These are my opinions. I do not profess to speak for IBM. I do not profess to speak for Linden Labs.

I am astounded sometimes when I read otherwise intelligent people, write short sighted appraisals on the triviality of Second Life, with little understanding of it’s full implications.

In the not too distant future a three dimensional VR platform will augment and in many cases supersede what we currently know of as the internet. It does not mean that Second Life will become that platform, and no, they were not even first to the party. However, nothing succeeds like success- Under Philip Rosedale’s management team, Linden Labs entered the market just as bandwidth penetration for such an application was reaching critical mass in the US market. Theirs was the first viable product to deliver on the promise of a scalable VR world. It is their market to lose.

IBM’s interest in Second Life is not a fad chasing, or passing gesture. With a 2007 commitment of $100M in Second Life development, they are fathoms ahead of others in this arena. They are not fools. Most of IBM’s Second Life development is not even open to the public. They have built large scale office parks off the public grid, accessible only to IBM employees, where far flung global team members are given virtual offices, replacing tele/video conferencing as the primary mode of holding project meetings, augmented by Voice over IP. Note that VoIP is the next major interface enhancement that will be implemented within the Second Life application. Headset based eye-wear is sure to follow soon. As bandwidth increases and compression/streaming technologies improve, the realism of the platform will continue to evolve in the same exponential manner as we’ve seen in video games over the past decade.

Neither is IBM’s interest a gamble on Second Life’s success. It is an investment in a new communication paradigm. While other companies are looking at Second Life as a short term PR based marketing opportunity, IBM is busy becoming THE company with extensive experience in VR based business practices- the business implications of operating a global company with full integration of Virtual Reality as a business communications platform. A communication tool where geography presents no limitations on speech, sight, or the full spacial interaction between participants. Whether Linden Lab’s product, or a competitor’s becomes the standard is not so relevant. It is the experience with Virtual Reality as a business tool that is of value. This experience will transfer to any successful VR platform. In time, as VR joins the web, email, instant messaging, video conferencing, the telephone, the cell phone, the PDA, the fax machine, as just another ubiquitous communication tool, when other companies are just waking up to the notion, IBM will already be positioned as the authority on Virtual Reality best practices. All this, at a time when many companies are only pretending to have their internet/intranet/extranet strategies in place. For many businesses, VR could prove a greater impact than even the internet itself.

If you happen to view Second Life only as an escapist fantasy “game” world, and you think IBM is out of touch for not understanding this, I suggest that you’re looking at Second Life through the lens of your own limited experience.

Chris Grayson

I reprint the letter here with Chris’s permission. Assuming that the letter is accurate, and I’m sure it is, then VR interfaces may proliferate quite quickly if they take off. Clearly IBM is betting on this with real rather than virtual dollars. However I’ve yet to have any demonstration of VR interfaces being more productive than alternative ways of collaborating. Entertaining? yes, and hence commercially attractive to the entertainment industry, but productive?

The problem that I have with this is that there are already a whole set of sophisticated interface options for being productive with a wired computer, depending upon the task that you are carrying out. I don’t see how being instantiated as an avatar helps with any significant ones. Many truly collaborative tasks involve working in teams with software tools, managing versions, scheduling and so on. How does an avatar improve the process. You don’t need VR to share white boards or do Powerpoint over the web or even play a 3D animation. Second life has chat – which is fine, but how is it superior if there’s an avatar on the screen?

I’d rather actually see a face because you can “read” faces but you can’t “read” avatars. Avatars are very useful for anonymity. There are probably some business contexts where that can help, but I don’t think there are many. I get the idea of marketing to people in Second Life itself. If they’re there and volunteer for it, then hit them with ads. But that’s clearly not what IBM has in mind.

Am I missing something IBM?