IBM Enters Second Life

January 31, 2007

The latest issue of the hip biz magazine Fast Company offers an insight into the way the world is going: Big Blue have begun to use a Second Life island as a training ground for new hires (if you have absolutely no idea what that means, perhaps you need to find out . . .). SL now claims around 3 million citizens. It seems that one of the issue facing the presidential campaigns is whether to set up shop there. The omnicompetent Judge Richard Posner has been reported speechifying there. Apparently the new US Congress even had an opening there.

This may all be (relatively) harmless fun, useful skills training, sufficiently novel to be still cute even if bizarre, and rather time-consuming for those of us who tend to find this-worldly responsibilities take up too many of the 24 hours we still get with each day. On the other hand, the potential for other-worldly absorption goes far beyond that of a reclusive religion, and once the brain-machine interface (BMI) comes on stream in a user-friendly guise . . . .