IBM to Regulate Employee Second Life Behavior 165
mytrip writes "In hopes of avoiding potentially embarrassing incidents, IBM is taking the unusual step of establishing official guidelines for its more than 5,000 employees who inhabit Second Life and other virtual worlds. 'IBM appears to be the first corporation to create rules governing virtual worlds. The move has critics, who say that mandating behavior for the so-called "metaverse" is unlikely to reform impish avatars. They also question why IBM would add a layer of buttoned-down bureaucracy to this relatively rollicking corner of the Internet. IBM executives counter that having a code of conduct is akin to a corporate stamp of approval, encouraging workers to explore more than 100 worlds IBM collectively calls the 3D Internet.'" This regulation may be coming from more than self-interest: IBM sees these environments as management training courses in some ways; working inter-personal skills via chat and human resources via guild activities.
Re:Um... (Score:4, Interesting)
So I wouldn't classify second life as a game as there is no fun or objectives and its very clunky so 'playing' it isn't accurate.
Re:Um... (Score:3, Interesting)
But, yes. IBM is a tech company. They have islands in Second Life, and there are certainly people who have legitimate reasons to be exploring and doing things there on the clock, so why would it be a surprise that they'd sanction this?
Is it even legal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Um... (Score:2, Interesting)
Never-the-less interacting with digital representations of physical objects is a lot more intuitive than 'click this' or 'click that' blah blah blah that you get on current websites. Consider the possibility of an integration of something like SecondLife with something like Google Earth and replace all those web servers on the Internet with 'web servers' that can model the objects and then you would truly have the real Web 2.0.
I believe IBM has it right and have a big stake in it. If they integrate the Linden technology into Websphere.... wow that would be awesome.