The Coming Virtual Web

(page 3 of 3)

Likewise, virtual worlds also could inject real-world richness into online business negotiations and collaboration. Jeremy Bailenson, an assistant professor in Stanford University's Communications Dept. who works on motion-capture technologies for virtual reality research, suggests that avatars could be made much more expressive by mapping people's real facial expressions and body language onto them in virtual meetings.

Even more interesting, and not a little spooky, avatars could be manipulated subtly to give one an edge in business negotiations, Bailenson says. Research has shown that people are more influential when they look directly at their counterpart. In other research, people who view pictures of other people that have been even faintly morphed to incorporate their own facial features say they trust those people more. By applying the same idea to avatars in virtual-world meetings, Bailenson says, "you can optimize your negotiations in business."

Setting Standards for Virtual Worlds

Still others hope to apply to business the intrinsic appeal of various features of online virtual worlds and games. Startup Seriosity, for instance, is testing software that creates a virtual currency that will be used to reduce e-mail overload.

People may spend five Serios to send an e-mail they consider a high priority for the receiver, while they might spend only one Serio on an e-mail to tell people the office fridge will be emptied Friday. "When you look at how addicted people get to these games, you realize there's a psychology that you can apply to real-life business situations," says Seriosity CEO Ken Ross.

Before most of these visions can be fully realized, a lot of heavy lifting has to happen. PCs need the benefit of a few more rounds of graphics-chip improvements, as well as faster broadband speeds.

Not least, standards for connecting these worlds need to be developed. After all, the Web took off in no small part because browsers could access any site that adhered to basic standards. Just as they did with the Web, such standards likely would involve a lot of experimentation.

The main challenge, though, isn't technical. It's conceptual. Today's 3D interfaces are a work in progress. "They're dragging too much of the baggage of the real world into online," says Multiverse Marketing Director and Executive Producer Corey Bridges, citing virtual stores built by the likes of Circuit City (CC) and Sears (S) in Second Life.

"The last thing I want to do is shop for a crappy visualization of a washer," says Bridges, who's also a Multiverse co-founder. Ultimately, the key to virtual-world technologies spreading far and wide will be just what Neal Stephenson displayed in the first place: imagination.

Hof is BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau chief.