Second life?

In Training Zone today they talk about how the virtual world experience is being used for training and development. It's an interesting article and shows how using what was developed as a gaming concept has been turned to effective use.

Imagine! You could turn up to a virtual training session as an avatar and be the loud, noisy one who questions and challenges and joins in all the activities - even if in live situations you are the type to sit quietly at the back and hope you are not noticed.

But would you feel just as self-conscious in a virtual world as a real one, if your colleagues could identify you? And if they couldn't, well, how would they know you actually came to the training and derived the espoused benefit? Only time will tell.

TZ mention the use of these virtual worlds in Japan for mentoring and how IBM are investing a lot in the technology and creating a valid application for it in the workplace. It will be very interesting over the next few decades to see how technology continues to influence our behaviour.

And finally... I heard a little anecdote the other day: an old man and a young man were talking. The young man said 'You can't connect with our generation, how could you? We have the internet, jet planes, HD TV, mobile phones, none of that stuff was around when you were young...' and as the younger man pauses to catch his breath the older one says 'No, we never had those things when we were young - so we invented them.'