Virtual communities can be used as alternate setting in
which employees in expansive companies can get together and bounce ideas off
themselves. According to Mark Tutton in
an article on CNN said that Second Life one of these virtual worlds give
companies the abilities to create expansive environments such as auditoriums,
social areas, parks and more.
There and many pros and cons that can be seen through these
virtual worlds. Some of the pros include, ease of access to meet with people
from around the world. Less expenses as you are not shuttling employees from
different parts of the world to meet each other at a conference. Some cons
include the ability for others to get your login information and then
impersonate you. Also some people do not enjoy having to interact with people
through a computer but would much rather convey their ideas through meeting a
person face to face.
In the article in the Wall Street Journal by Stephanie
Simon, she explains that some hospitals have created a virtual hospital. This is
interesting as it give nurses and doctors a training ground in which they can
have simulations of how to deal with emergency situations. It also allows the hospital to be prepared
for these situations at a lower cost than a life according to the article it
costs $1,000 to buy the land and about $300 for programmers to maintain it. It
then also may cost up to $150,000 to build a to scale virtual hospital. All these
cost are less expensive then someone’s life. So for these reasons like being
able to create virtual buildings and practice what would happen in an intense
situation is very creative.
I hope these virtual worlds become less expensive to make so
that these companies can continue to keep costs down while also delivering a
superior product by using these virtual worlds to bounce off ideas with other
employees. I also think these virtual worlds will also be used more in the
future as they are less expensive then actually paying for flights for
employees.
I agree with you. If only the cost of making these technologies comes down, companies can use their resources more efficiently and will be most cost effective. I think there should be 'hybrid' mechanism of doing work, where companies can have face-to-face meeting and also virtual second life.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. As you can see, the cost of the internet drop within only few years. I think that no long after, more people will be able to use it without paying a lot.
ReplyDeleteI agree that one of the biggest advantages to virtual worlds is the fact that it can be used as a training ground. Hospitals, businessmen, and other trainees can use virtual worlds as a tool to help them simulate real-life circumstances. In hospitals, for example, investing in virtual simulation systems could probably help the error/failure rates and bring the cost of error down significantly.
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