Irving Wladawsky-Berger

From Sl Wiki

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM's Vice President of Technical Strategy and Innovation, is their leading light in IBM's development of 3D Metaverses.

Articles

• Experimenting with Virtual Worlds in the Real Marketplace
• Transforming Business through Virtual Worlds Capabilities – it's Déjà Vu All Over Again
• 'Broadband into your brain'; in this interview he talks with CNET about virtual environments. Rather than slowly processing information from e-mail and Web browsers, immersive 3D environments communicate on a deeper level--what Wladawsky-Berger describes as "broadband into our brains." He went on to say ,'I really believe that highly visual and collaborative interfaces will become very important in the way we interact with all IT (information technology) applications in the future. This may be one of the most revolutionary changes in IT because it changes everything and transforms the applications. Second Life is a very good platform for collaboration, but there will be other styles of visual applications as well.'

Quotes

• “…we are very much in the early, experimental stage in the use of Second Life and related virtual world capabilities in business and other societal applications such as health care, education and training, and government. We honestly do not know what works and what does not work, that is, what will be appealing and useful to people and what will not. But we also know that the only way to find out is to conduct experiments out there in the "real world", in the marketplace where the people are.”
• “A number of people will find virtual worlds, multiplayer online games and avatars kind of silly, especially our attempts at trying to explore how such capabilities can lead to v-business, that is, to "serious" applications involving business, work, learning and health care… It is important to remember that ten years ago many found the early Web-based applications rather weird and faddish, and not something that would likely take hold in business…But, I think that most will agree that the Internet and e-business have had a revolutionary impact on the world. “
• “We have… built links to other commerce sites like amazon.com to show how easy it is to link virtual worlds with the more conventional Web world.”
• “…ten years ago, the Internet was already being used by millions around the world, and we had a very strong sense that it was going to have a huge impact on businesses and institutions of all sorts, but we honestly were not quite sure what that impact would be… So, here we are (in 2006), once more facing a set of fledgling technologies and capabilities that are already being used by many millions out there. Once more we have the very strong feeling that this will have a huge impact on business, society and our personal lives, although none of us can quite predict what that impact will be. It will be fascinating to see where this ride takes us in the future.”