Una segunda vida para Second Life

Hace uno o dos años me atreví a recorrer Second Life por algo más de una hora hasta que me ganó el aburrimiento. Asumí mi derrota con la resignación del que va envejeciendo y miré desde afuera mientras los gurúes anunciaban el nuevo nirvana.

Como toda moda, Second Life parece destinado a pasar a mejor vida. But... BusinessWeek nos cuenta sobre nuevos usos para esta ya casi vieja herramienta:

But IBM may have found a way to overcome new employees' geographic and cultural barriers. When the Armonk (N.Y.) company can't get recent hires to mingle in person, it has them interact virtually, using the same kind of 3D technology that runs virtual worlds such as Linden Lab's Second Life. "It makes you want to start relationships," says Chuck Hamilton, manager of new media and learning at IBM@Play, a division that uses social media to foster collaboration. "People who are farther away—this is especially true of people who are not American-centric—get the feeling that they're not isolated."

Using software from Activeworlds, IBM builds virtual work spaces that let workers in far-flung regions use avatars, or graphic representations of themselves, to handle such tasks as rehearsing presentations or learning about employee benefits. The experimentation puts IBM in the vanguard of companies that, having tested the limits of marketing in such online environments as Second Life, are now infiltrating virtual worlds to tackle a range of other activities, from meetings to collaboration, from training to employee recruiting.

¡Ahora sí la cosa comienza a ponerse ligeramente aterradora! Estamos mucho más cerca de lo que creemos de empezar a mediar nuestras relaciones a través de mundos virtuales. And it will be just fine.