Thanks, John

You can express opinions but if you misrepresent facts, that’s where you can get into legal troubles and all those things and such.

Alan Kay had an educational interest in croquet and funded research in it to inspire the minds of children and folks who had thought their maturity precluded “childish” inspiration.

His doing with images makes symbols on google video
(you may have to struggle to get part 2 where the meat is
in just about 20 minutes excerpt) speaks of his teaching philosophy.

Alan Kay invented object oriented programming and croquet is a virtual world creator that really is an open operating system running on a squeak virtual machine, so the child in us can learn to create, not only virtual worlds, but also open object oriented operating systems.

I got into it when I remembered a Tim Gallway movie about someone learning choral direction by moving from a natural dance form. I saw someone do that last year in a choir camp and recalled the movie around 1984 and started tracking down what Alan Kay was doing nowadays.

I should just add that Second Life itself is accessible form inside IBM. However we have intranet, internal applications that cannot be reached from Second Life.

Why is SL of interest to business? For me, as an employee of a global company, the first (and quick) answer is cost reduction. If only a tiny fraction of meetings are held in 3D spaces the savings in travel time, cost and carbon miles delivers a rapid return on investment.

But it goes much further. Communication within large companies can be very difficult. EG: How do you find the folk who can help you with a particular topic? The casual, ad hoc teams and interest groups that can come about in social spaces can address this.

Also, 3D literally adds another dimension to visualisation. Conveying complex relationships (data models, business processes etc) can be more effective if done in 3D. Also, “metaphor models” (using familiar objects to explain the complex) work better in an environment with which we are familiar. We live in a 3D world, so 3D models are more intuitive (if done well!).

Finally, 3D worlds provide the opportunity for presentations and trade shows where a company can field their senior executives (whose time may be too tight to spend on otherwise lengthy business trips) and place them in direct and immediate (pseudo-)face-to-face contact with their clients and prospects.

There are many other features – but that will do for now!