by Elizabeth M. Ferrarini

Ask some executives about their "Second Life experience," and they'll tell you about their plans for retirement. But ask the same question of Dr. Jonas Karlsson, a senior researcher at the Xerox Research Center in Webster, New York, and you'll be mesmerized by his answer. He says, "Second Life brings to life on the Web the virtual worlds created by William Gibson in Neuromancer and  Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash. Similar to multiplayer online games, the Second Life experience, developed and run by Linden Labs, enables people to build a 3D virtual reality community in which everyone creates an identity using an avatar, and interacts with people with more fluid communication, or as if they were living another life."

Many companies, such as Xerox and IBM, are looking at both internal and external applications for Second Life. Perhaps the most pervasive applications include employee collaboration, employee training, and product demonstrations.

Recently, Karlsson talked with Enterpriseleadership.org about the Second Life research he is doing at Xerox's Research Center, one of  four facilities that comprise the Xerox Innovation Group, which is charted to design Xerox's next generation products, and to test them internally.

EL: Given that you are a team leader in the Synthetic Worlds  initiative, why are you fascinated by virtual worlds?

JK: I am a computer geek who is enamored by the virtual, immersive environments described by both Gibson and Stevenson. In fact, a lot of terminology that Second Life developers are using comes from these science fiction novels. You can use your imagination to manipulate these environments in ways that you can't do in real life.

EL: Can you talk about the evolution of Second Life  technology?

JK: At the end of the 1990s, the gaming industry really started to pick up on virtual reality, developing very realistic 3D, multiplayer, role-playing games. Some people now play these games up to 30 hours a week. When you connect people to other people, something really dramatic happens.

Second Life provides the same type of environment minus the gaming. Second Life is becoming a platform that allows people to create and to share 3D virtual content with each other.

EL: Can you describe your Second Life piece of real estate, called  the Xerox Innovation Island?

JK: As part of my Second Life research project, I bought a small island to use for exploration and for others to test their ideas. Right now, it has a research building with meeting rooms and a demonstration space. The rest of the island is still undeveloped.

When we did a product launch at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, we had a parallel event on the island. We built a pavilion with an auditorium and a product display area. We streamed video so that people at Fenway Park could see it. On the island, we had people exploring the product and having a panel discussion with researchers from Xerox PARC, IBM, and other places.

EL: What are some of the business applications for Second  Life?

JK: Most companies plan to use this technology to communicate with other people. After all, Second Life is a social medium. It provides a more interesting and engaging experience than either the telephone or a Webcast. It's great for bringing together employees in remote locations to see, for example, a product demo. IBM plans to use Second Life to have all new hires participate in a new employee orientation, which will help them to adopt to the IBM culture.

Because you know at all times whom is in the Second Life environment, you are free to communicate with anyone and try out new ideas. You can't do this with some collaboration tools.

EL: What is the downside to the Second Live experience?

JK: At times it becomes difficult to distinguish between things in Second Life, or "inworld," and things outside of Second Life ("out of world"). Once you begin working in your space, you start thinking, "I shouldn't make my job sound like it is not part of the real world." We are trying to come up with other terms to use.

EL: Many of the collaboration tools don't require you to create an  avatar. What's the advantage of creating one?

JK: My avatar is Point Q. Malaproper. Every Second Life user has to create an account and to create an avatar. The avatar portrays how you want to look to others. People spend a lot of time customizing their avatar.

Google documents, Wikis, or blogs don't require an avatar. In some respect, virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are another collaboration tool. When I'm contributing to a Wiki, I don't necessarily know who else is working on it at the same time. In Second Life, you can see everyone's avatar. For example, I can go onto the Xerox Information Island and see people from different parts of Xerox. These are people who I might otherwise have had no contact with.

Creating an avatar is the first step in interacting with people. There's a real art in how you communicate in Second Life. You need to have the right tools in order to maintain the company. You need to know what makes for acceptable and understandable communications. One of our other Xerox Innovation Group labs is working on these issues.

EL: Who supplies the technology behind Second Life?

JK: We contracted with Beta Technologies, a metaverse content developer, to build the Xerox Pavillion on the Xerox Information Island. Metaverse is another term for the 3D virtual world. This company created models for our devices, programming them to do various things when we interacted with them.

Linden Labs., based in San Francisco, California, runs Second Life on huge server farms. Every user needs to download a client in order to connect to the environment. The client is available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux Alpha.

EL: Since Linden Labs controls the Second Life environment, what kinds of content and or security problems does that present to a company?

JK: That's one of the big problems with Second Life for a company like Xerox. The company firewall will block access to the Linden servers for both security and content reasons. However, many companies are trying to figure out how to provide safe and secure access to their Second Life environment.

The good new is that Linden Labs has announced an Open Source server, which will enable companies to run their own Second Life server behind the company firewall. This will make everyone happy.

EL: What is the competition like for Second Life  products?

JK: We're starting to see new competitors every day. For example, Sun Microsystems has announced a platform that will enable companies to build and to host a virtual environment on a server. This platform is based on two of Sun's gaming platforms.

There are other systems and platforms on the horizon. The main difference right now is the ease of use. Some systems require you to be an expert in 3D creation tools. If you want to succeed in the Second Life space, you need to make it easy for users to create 3D content.

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Elizabeth M. Ferrarini is a writer from Boston,  Massachusetts. Reach her at elizabethferrarini@yahoo.com.