KnowledgeForward

I don’t normally indulge in fiction writing in this blog, but maybe just once wouldn’t hurt. Besides, it’s not really fiction – it’s just a tongue-in-cheek way of describing what I see as the past generations and future generations of enterprise virtual worlds. I won’t go so far as to say these are definite predictions, but simply a description of a likely path (well, all except that last paragraph) for how large organizations will make serious use of virtual worlds.

So, how did it happen? The rise of the virtual worlds and their colonization by the Enterprise and everything that happened afterwards?

Well, no one knows exactly when the virtual worlds began. It was about 2006 when the adults began to notice that their teenagers would go into their rooms and disappear for hours at end. They would emerge only for food, squinting in the full light of the kitchen, and mumbling about “avatars”, “griefing”, “furries”, and “rezzing.” College students had disappeared too, but everyone just thought they were at class. Little did the adults know, but the virtual worlds were being built and populated from portals in their own homes.

Some of these adults worked in the Enterprise – large organizations and corporations where they attended meetings, designed products for customers, and tested out ideas. They wore woolly uniforms and had a confusing array of titles, although most of the ones with computers were called “infoworkers.” During 2006, some of them took a look at the virtual worlds through their telescopes, located at the end of hallways of fuzzy cubes at the top of their well lit, climate-controlled buildings in suburban office parks. What they saw was strange creatures – cat-men, flying faeries, naked inhabitants. There were people bumping repeatedly into walls or flying into buildings while others stood still for hours at a time typing on invisible keyboards. The infoworkers of the Enterprise thought the world they were viewing was bizarre and of no use to them, so they decided to stay away. Besides, they had work to do attending meetings, designing products, and testing ideas.

But by the end of 2006 the Enterprise had sent the first wave of intrepid colonists to the virtual worlds. It was a small number and conditions were harsh for the colonists. They didn’t know a lot about their environment and encountered griefers at every turn. They mostly came from high tech companies or those with youth-oriented brands. They came from IBM, Cisco, Sun, Intel, Reebok, American Apparel, Adidas, Toyota. The high tech companies sent evangelists back to the real world, telling about the wondrous things they had seen and done in the Enterprise virtual worlds.

Back in their fuzzy cubes and breakout session rooms, the infoworkers listened intently and the evangelists finally got them to go back to their telescopes and look at the virtual worlds again. They saw something that amazed them. They looked at the virtual worlds and saw their customers. Then they looked a little more and saw their competitors there too, sometimes talking to their customers. That was all they needed to see, so in 2007 the second wave of colonization began.

Oddly enough, as the second wave of colonists was traveling to the virtual worlds - virtual construction engineers and brand consultants in tow - they noticed some colonists from the first wave passing them on the way back. A few of them, from American Apparel and Wells Fargo, had already decided to pack up and leave. Some complained that the worlds were empty wastelands without a colonist in sight. Starwood was towing an entire hotel called Aloft with them. They seemed happy though, saying their time on the virtual world helped them design their hotel. Wells Fargo, towing Stagecoach Island behind them, was just traveling to another virtual world rather than heading back to Earth. The climate on the world they first colonized was too wild and unforgiving, but they had heard of tamer environs farther away and were off to colonize other worlds.

Some of the virtual world programmers went underground and decided to work on creating infrastructure that many worlds, each to meet different needs, could be built off of. Being able to control their environment and what the people in it could do made the Enterprises feel more confident that the risks involved were not too great, so they colonized new places where the virtual worlds, not just the islands and buildings in it, were built to their specifications.

With more controlled environments available by 2009, a third wave of colonization began. The Enterprise sent many of its best and most creative infoworkers – programmers, designers, and even marketing product managers. The term “resident” gave way to “visitor”, because the virtual people were there to visit, not stay, just like on websites.

As the customized virtual worlds could be created and owned by the Enterprise, they created worlds much like the secure websites they created for partners back home. Rather than everything being public like in the old virtual worlds, these could be controlled and only accessible by visitors the Enterprise wanted there. But putting private information in the virtual worlds caused the Enterprise security forces to become nervous. So, in 2010 a shipload of lawyers arrived. “Who invited them?” asked some of the frightened programmers. But the leaders of the infoworkers stood up and said “We did! Playing around and experimenting is fine, but if we are going to make this mission critical and confidential, we need them to make this world safe for the Enterprise.” And with that, the lawyers drew their pens and fired termination clauses, retribution clauses, service level agreements, latency warranties, confidentiality clauses, information privacy warranties, and hosted service warranties. Terms like “furries” and “rezzing” gave way to discussions of “code escrow” and “bonding.”

In 2012 standards came down from Earth and permeated the wild frontier of the virtual worlds. It became easier for colonists (now called residents after living there so long) to bring their belongings with them when moving to another world. There were more laws to regulate business transactions (but thankfully not taxes until 2015 as a last grab for revenue before an election).

By 2014 the virtual worlds had become accepted and even boring. Infoworkers who had decided long ago that they shouldn’t show up to work in a bunny costume determined it was probably inappropriate (even though possible) on their enterprise virtual worlds too, except on Halloween. In fact, they no longer felt like a wild frontier, but just another place for the Enterprise to use when needed. They didn’t replace much of what the Enterprise did in their fuzzy cubes. When the enterprise felt a virtual world was the best way of collaborating while attending meetings, designing products for customers, and testing out ideas, they visited them. When they felt other, more archaic communication and collaboration mechanisms were better, they used the old mechanisms. The portals, which were awkward at first, became better as virtual browser technology improved and standardized. In fact, virtual browsers and web browsers combined in 2016 as the separation between virtual content and web content became meaningless. Now they colonized in force.

That’s right about the time a band of real aliens happened upon the Earth. They found everyone – the teenagers and the adult workers – sitting around their portals to the virtual worlds and decided they could invade and be done before lunchtime. All the adults, now weak from a lack of physical exercise and blinded by the sun, were now no match for the aliens who took over the Earth, had a quick snack, and continued along their way.

The end.

In my research into virtual worlds I’ve run across many complimentary references to Edward Castronova, so I was very interested to get his book “Synthetic Worlds, the Business and Culture of Online Games”.  Besides, he teaches at my alma mater Indiana University, so I have to pull for a fellow Hoosier. 

I generally talk about virtual worlds, but Castronova uses the term “synthetic world”.  He defines a synthetic world as “an expansive, world-like, large-group environment made by humans, for humans, and which is maintained, recorded, and rendered by a computer”. 

As an economist, Castronova keenly understands and conveys why items in these worlds have value and why that value is often directly convertible into real currency as proof.  And as an economist, his best insights are into the economics of virtual worlds.  Castronova includes a great chapter on the Economics of Fun.  When I was writing games for Strategic Simulations (SSI) in the 80’s I had an explicit set of characteristics I would apply that described what made a game enjoyable.  Castronova hits them head on: that new objects provide new capabilities, that making choices under scarcity is enjoyable, that the work required to produce rewards is reasonable, and that everyone gets to play “rags to riches” with their characters.  My games pre-dated the internet era, so Castronova adds others that didn’t apply in my experience such as crime, competition, and human-driven economics.

Castornova has also discovered the concept I call “bridging” when he talks about “moments that blurred the distinction between this world and the synthetic world”.  I also feel this is why some people don’t “get” virtual worlds though.  They cannot suspend belief or open themselves up to the virtual reality as having any meaning.

He shows some good insight into general aspects of philosophy, policy, and design of virtual worlds.  In fact, the best quote of the book is this one: “my argument is not that you should care about the ogres and elves running around in cyberspace, but that you should care about the fact that there are ogres and elves, millions of them, running around in cyberspace.” (p. 251)

But clearly, Castronova is not as authoritative when straying far from economics.  For example, when entering the realm of behavioral science, Castronova falls into the common fallacy of saying that people immerse themselves in virtual worlds when they are better than the real world.  The stereotype here is the geek who gets picked on by the bigger boys at school and is ignored by his parents, but escapes to his room to play EverQuest where he is a famous, powerful warrior that commands respect and attention. But those are my words.  As Castronova puts it: “the new worlds being built will grow in popularity if, and only if, they provide a better life experience than the world we were born into.” (p. 70)  That may be true for some people and at some times when they look for escape, just as people do through movies.  But VWs also just count as entertainment, like sports.  Has anyone shown quantitatively or anecdotally that when internet access is provided in impoverished inner cities or war-torn third world countries that people try to escape into virtual worlds?  On the contrary, I think VWs are more popular with people with pretty comfy lives who have their other basic needs met.

But it is in the realm of philosophy (or, more exactly, utopian visioning), that Castronova runs off the road (chapter 12).  His imaginings include potential utopias where a person would be “judged not by the body but on the basis of the mind alone.” and “once everyone gets used to the fact that bodies don’t matter, they may cease to cause discrimination even on Earth.”  (p.25

Many of his experiences in these games and worlds simply don’t match with mine.  For one, his description of the experience of using a synthetic world is a bit more immersive and extreme than I have experienced and I suspect may overstate its impact on people.  For example, he describes how the user’s identity begins to expand to encompass the user’s avatar, such as when “the avatar’s attributes felt like they were your own personal attributes” or that people frequently leave off “character” or “avatar” when saying things like “my strength is depleted”.  They actually do this when they have multiple avatars, which is pretty common. 

So all in all, I think this is a great book and a must-read for people interested in what virtual worlds are about (mostly from a gaming point of view).  It provides an overview of how the games work followed by a survey of philosophy, game design, politics, psychology, and sociology behind the games, but is clearly most at home with the economics of these worlds.

Since New Year’s is tonight, I thought it would be fun and informative to publish some of the search terms that people have used in 2007 to find this blog. WordPress lets me see what search terms people used to find my blog. so I find it interesting to scan it from time to time to see what zeitgeist I’m connecting to, especially when its inadvertent.

Here are some of the more interesting searches that have found me (honestly!):

• fired for turning off Blackberry vacation
• portal are dead (multiple searches)
• Jingle Bells metal version
• chart of dwarfs in america
• mucketymucks definition
• feeling disconnected from it all (sad that multiple people were searching on this. Sadder still that my blog probably offered them no solace)
• People who behave rudely at social gatherings (I’m still struggling with why my name popped up with this search query)
• virtual monkey,virtual torture, etc. (it’s a bit disturbing that this is not a one time search - it’s shown up consistently over a long period of time)
• computers hate me, my computer hates me, computer hate
• weight management, weight loss
• bell bottoms back in style
• cootie shot pic
• sleek kills
• managers cant afford to be moral
• 50000 FEET=?KM

Happy New Year!

-Craig Roth

I was reading an article in last week’s Economist (Clinical depression | Something in the way he moves) when the behavior they described sounded vaguely familiar:

Dr Yamamoto collected the data for his own particular power-law curves by fitting his experimental subjects—about half of whom were healthy, and half of whom had been diagnosed as having clinical (or “major”) depression—with accelerometers. These devices measure how often someone changes his rate of movement by recording each time his acceleration exceeds a certain threshold.

The basic results confirmed a known feature of depressed people. The normal daily rhythm that would lead to a high, steady number of counts during daylight hours and low counts during the night was replaced by occasional bursts of activity. The surprise came when the team started plotting their results out on graphs.

The curves produced by plotting the lengths of low-activity periods against their frequency were strikingly different in healthy and depressed people. This reflects not inactivity by the depressed (though they were, indeed, less active) but a difference in the way that the healthy and the depressed spread their resting periods over the day. Depressed people experience longer resting periods more frequently and shorter ones less frequently than healthy people do.

Hmmm. People who show no movement for most of the day except for brief bursts of activity … sounds like me and every other information worker I know! While I might consider a day where I write 10 pages of a report and handle 75 emails as very productive, I’m sure an accelerometer (I’m assuming from the name it measures acceleration, not flailing fingers) would say I hadn’t moved for hours. My long bouts of inactivity would be punctuated by a flurry of activity in the morning and mid-evening (hopefully with some tennis or a bike ride), another bout of inactivity (as I hit the computer for a few more hours of work or reading), dinnertime activity (lots of acceleration if I’m cooking, which often includes a mad dash to unplug the smoke alarm), then rest again.

So does that mean the activity patterns of information workers mirror those of clinically depressed people? I doubt it. It’s probably a coincidence that wouldn’t be borne out by measuring brain activity (which has also been shown to reflect clinical depression). Maybe the study accounted for this, but I can’t tell since my searching wasn’t able to uncover the original article. Still, I’ve been looking for an excuse to get me out of my seat more during the day and this might be just the ticket.

So my laptop still blows up randomly and my word processor crashes, but at least my computer will now be able to laugh at me and make up puns? And somehow a device that only laughs at one specific type of joke is going to be less annoying?

Julia Taylor and Lawrence Mazlack of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio have built a computer program or “bot” that is able to get a specific type of joke - one whose crux is a simple pun. They say this budding cyber wit could lend a sense of humour to physical robots acting as human companions or helpers, which will need to be able to spot jokes if they are to be accepted and not just annoy people. The bot is also teasing apart why some people laugh at a joke, such as the one above, when most just groan.

This probably won’t get too far. In Star Trek Next Generation when Captain Picard said “Fire at will!” did Data laugh and shoot at Commander Will Riker?  No he didn’t, so the computer that likes puns must have disappeared from the timeline.

Source: Sharing a joke could help man and robot interact - tech - 01 August 2007 - New Scientist Tech

I wrote previously on how attention management can be applied to losing weight (see Attention Management for Weight Loss!). Now I’m wondering if technologies commonly associated with social software can do the same.

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, researchers at the University of California in San Diego Harvard Medical School have found that social networking effects influence weight loss/gain. For one of a zillion articles on this story check out “Is obesity contagious?” 25 July 2007 - New Scientist. If a person’s friends are all thin or go on a diet, it encourages that person to also view thinness as achievable and desirable. The interesting part to me is that it is the bond of the social network, not merely proximity, that matters. The article states:

Fowler notes that friends living nearby seemed to exert just as much influence on a person’s weight as those living 800 kilometers (500 miles) away. To him, this suggests that the trend has more to do with a spread of social norms than behaviors. In other words, the idea of what constitutes a normal weight travels more easily across distance than do behaviors – such as exercise and eating routines.

So, does IM’ing count? How about participants in my social bookmarking? Should I only join discussion groups with exercise fanatics? Can I set up filters on my e-mail to block any sender with a body mass index over 20 (don’t need the extra pounds with that spam!)?  Swarm with comments on my blog and lose weight? Nah … I’m just having fun with this of course. But it still does point out the importance of social networks over artificial networks such as who sits around you in your cubicle or who the org chart says are your immediate peers.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if every topic area in the Collaboration and Content Strategies service relates to weight loss at some point. What’s next: portals or content management …

One of the characteristics of a good, scripted TV show is that it creates its own universe with laws for how people behave and interesting characters. This characteristic applies whether it’s Dallas or Twin Peaks. Another characteristic of a good TV show is the water cooler talk it inspires - the community of like-minded people that can now get in touch with each other and have something to talk about.

It would therefore seem they have synergy with virtual worlds, which thrive on having a unique vibe and a community of like-minded people who want to socialize. In fact, this is exactly what happened with Firefly, a short-lived Fox TV show according to the article “Firefly Reborn as Online Universe” in Wired.

I would be surprised if the upward trend in users of virtual worlds does not increase dramatically over the next 3-7 years. Their capabilities are just being tested and the saturation point is nowhere in sight. As this happens, many facets of our society will get pulled in as they did for the internet. The media giants, like with Firefly, will see the value in maintaining branded virtual experiences as extensions or replacements for their content. It’s been widely reported that enterprises are beginning to explore how to use virtual worlds for collaboration, simulation, e-learning, and recruiting as well. It is a fascinating time to be watching the evolution of this industry.

I’m starting out a little slow today after my first arena-scale rock concert in about 15 years - The Police. I used to go to several a year in my college days and had gotten used to the feel of them and their traditions such as lighters for the slow songs and guessing which song they left for an encore.

But I forgot we’re leaving in the Web 2.0 era, which has changed everything from politics to, apparently, rock concerts. When the opening notes of Message in a Bottle start up I look to the stage and from my vantage point I can see the screens of a sea of mobile devices glowing in front of me. Hmmm, I don’t remember that from Def Leppard ‘88.

The guy sitting in front of me is on his Blackberry about 50% of the time. Apparently the communal aspect of 45,000 fans around him isn’t sufficiently social for him, so he feels the need to constantly send emails to friends and family. Sample email (hard not to see the screen in the dark): “I’m at The Police concert with your daughter. Cool.”

As they work through the set list I am not at all surprised to hear most of the favorites off of their Greatest Hits album. And if there was any mystery left, it was eliminated by the Wikipedia entry that already exists for the concert listing the set list, encores (two), and tour dates.

When Wrapped Around your Finger started up a smattering of people held up lighters, but most of the crowd held up cell phones instead. The eerie glow of the cell phone screens was no substitute for the star-like effect of thousands of lighters.

The show went off well though. A few wrong notes, but not as bad as the show on May 31st. How do I know that? Because of Stewart Copeland’s blog entry that day of course (is this entry legit?). This is the Web 2.0 era. Cell phones instead of lighters, e-mail during the concert, recent pop events already chronicled in encyclopedia form next to World War II, and online journals from band members are now just par for the course.

As readers may be aware, I’m not enchanted with the current fad of throwing “2.0″ at the end of every term. It just seems too easy as a platform for structuring a conversation about how something has changed, what was in 1.0, what will be in 3.0, how you’re a Luddite if you’re not with us on 2.0, etc. Someone asked about Search 2.0 the other day and, while I hadn’t heard that term before, I have no doubt I’d find a bunch of people talking about it if I Googled it.

But then another thought occurred to me … Craig Roth 2.0. I Googled “You 2.0″ and got tons of responses (29,000 to be exact). Many are related to the Time magazine cover or other ways of referring to whether you are using Web 2.0. Some are those emailed jokes about “husband 2.0″ and such. But I also saw sincere personal entries about people reinventing or versioning themselves. Treating oneself as a product to be versioned has its illuminating appeal.

Versioning oneself is nothing new. If I was a film maker, I’d probably be thinking in terms of sequels (Craig II: The Empire Strikes Back …). If I was an author I’d think in terms of chapters of my saga. But content-related versioning seems to refer to measuring the progress of your story rather than the progress of you. I like the way software versioning doesn’t inject the story as a refraction point and how it accounts for major and minor releases, which is a better analogy for life (and, as I argue, for the Web as well - who says we just hit 2.0000?).

Simplistic numbering schemes abound: 1.0 for childhood, 2.0 for college, 3.0 for workplace, etc. Or just age - when I was halfway through my 25th year I was CR25.5. These lack explanatory power, however, and sidestep the burden of value judgement that “.0″ places on one to indicate that a significant and discrete set of improvements has taken place. What’s the point of the exercise without this judgement?

Maybe I was 1.0 as a self-employed software developer, 2.0 as corporate code jockey, 3.0 as manager, 4.0 as analyst? If my identity is anchored to my profession, that makes sense. Or maybe I’m 1.0 as a child, 2.0 in college, 3.0 living on my own, and 4.0 married? This better reflects the stages of life.

Looking back at what stages I’ve been through and judging retroactively which changes turned out to just be a point release (like going from 3.0 to 3.1 or 3.01) and how I knew when there had been a major versioning is interesting. But what’s more enlightening is looking forward - asking myself the same questions I’d ask a software vendor about the next version of their product (tongue planted firmly in cheek):

• Is your next release going to be a major (”.0″) version or just a minor enhancement?
• What features can I expect in the next release?
• There have been some complaints with the current version (performance problems, unexpected behavior, poor jazz piano improvisation, etc.). Are those issues going to be addressed in the next release?
• When is the next release expected?
• Do you have a beta of the next version that I can see before it’s released to the public?
• Will there be any migration difficulties and support for people using the current version?
• How do I submit change requests for the next version?

Of course, who is to say versioning myself means I have to act like a product manager? It tends to happen on its own whether you notice it or not. To paraphrase an old saying: “versioning happens”.

And maybe I shouldn’t make the assumption that the numbers have to keep increasing. The software industry needs to keep upping the version numbers the way Pepsi needs to keep coming out with new flavors. But as people, is it OK to get to, say, version 6.24 and then just stay there? There are a lot of customers who continue to use very old versions of software because it works just fine and they see no reason to change for the sake of change. There’s something reassuring about a piece of software that really was built so well in the first place that it can be used for years without support and just do its job. And something just as reassuring about a person that has reached not a pinnacle, but a comfortable place that offers them all they want and remains a consistent rock to those around them.

Well, I’m not contemplating a major version change at the moment. But minor ones are in the works. And hey, versioning happens.

While I’ve been clear to point out my view that attention in an attention management sense should not equate to action (for example, as “pay attention to your schoolwork” means “do your schoolwork”). But I do think there is an interesting phenomenon where attention leads to action at a subliminal level.

A great example is weight loss. The Wall St. Journal (1/16/07) had an article called “Latest Weight-Loss Advice: Slow Down and Pay Attention” which said “There’s a lot of evidence that simply changing your habits and attention level while eating can make a difference in the quantity of food you ingest”. The more distracted people are when they eat, the more they eat.

There’s an interesting book called “The Inner Game of Tennis” by W. Timothy Gallwey. Forget the title – it’s not really about tennis. It’s a tennis instruction book that only spends about 1 page on technique. The thesis of the book (in my view) is that people have internal mechanisms that correct behavior and affect action as long as attention is paid to an activity (the brain is actively focusing on what is going on, processing it, building an internal database of what is happening in various situations). One need not mentally recite advice about how to swing up at the ball, follow through, etc. Just being an active but non-judgemental observer can have tremendous effect. To quote a statement from Gallwey that appeared in Amazon.com “”No matter what a person’s complaint when he has a lesson with me, I have found the most beneficial first step,” he stressed, “is to encourage him to see and feel what he is doing–that is, to increase his awareness of what actually is.” “

Most of what I talk about with Enterprise Attention Management is of a more explicit variety – by pulling more important messages forward and paying attention to them, the information worker can take optimal action. But it is interesting to note the more subtle ways in which this happens. A mantra of Total Quality Management is that monitoring and measurement encourages optimization and change. As the Wall St. Journal article and Gallwey book show, this mechanism is even ingrained in our psyche.