Phillip Rosendale, CEO of Linden Lab, spoke at The Managing Virtual Distance conference held by the Institute for International Research at The Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, CA. Summary posted at Metaversed.com with a snippet discussing what is it about virtual worlds that benefit people in the workplace.
Tangible Corporate Benefit
The audience from Anaheim, however, was more interested in how this has helped companies. What is it about a virtual environment that will benefit people in the workplace?
"When you're in Second Life your memory, your ability to remember conversations you had is very acute. The reason for that is the virtual world can easily present us with an understandable physical environment [...] the novelty of the physical environment has a strong agency in helping us to remember. You can probably all remember the book you were reading when last on vacation because of the novelty of the location you were in when you were reading that book."
Even video conferencing can't compare. It breaks the "eye contact" that avatars can simulate, making people feel alienated from each other even if they can see each other plainly. "Meeting in virtual environments is going to be extremely commonly used"
