Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Driving Value with the Metaverse in the Enterprise

A killer app is an IT application whose value to individuals and companies is relatively simple to explain, its use is fairly intuitive, and the application turns out to be so useful that it can singlehandedly propel the success of a new product or service. Word processing and spreadsheets, for example, were major factors in the widespread adoption of personal computers in the 1980s.

I got interested in 3D immersive environments in the mid-2000s when IBM launched an exploratory initiative on the topic. As part of these efforts, we conducted a number of experiments on Second Life, a platform that allowed its users to develop a variety of virtual world applications. We built a number of workplace applications, including virtual meetings, and online events, and even built a virtual replica of Beijing’s Forbidden City in partnership with the Palace Museum that was opened to the public. But, despite our high expectations, we couldn’t find any compelling enterprise killer apps, and after about three years, the project was dissolved. In the ensuing years, 3D immersive technologies and applications continued to advance, but mostly focused on video-games and related industries.

The past few years have seen a surge of interest in the metaverse and extended reality. “After desktop computing, the consumer internet and the smartphone boom, the consumer-computing industry is past due its Next Big Thing,” wrote The Economist in  “A reality check for the metaverse is coming,” an article in its 2022 year-end issue. “[A]n internet which is still largely flat — based on two-dimensional text, images and video — is ripe for replacement with one that is three-dimensional and immersive.”

The Real Business of Blockchain

“Companies in industries as diverse as finance, sports, health care, retail, oil and gas, and pharma are engaging in a wave of blockchain experiments,” write Gartner analysts David Furlonger and Christophe Uzureau in their recently published book The Real Business of Blockchain.  “Many see it as the solution for bringing trust and transparency to digital environments.” Blockchain has indeed been capturing the imagination of business.  According to a Gartner Research Forecast, the business value-add of blockchain is expected to exceed $3 trillion by 2030, over half that amount by 2025.  But, in plain English, what does this all mean?

“It means you can theoretically do business with an unknown partner located anywhere on the planet and trade any asset at any transaction size and not need a lawyer, a bank, an insurance company, or any other intermediary making sure both of you follow through on what you’ve promised to do,” write the book’s authors.  “Such a solution vastly expands the range of assets that a business could trade.  The arrangement also greatly increases who or what a business could directly trade with, without needing a third party (which would take a piece of the value).”

The Business Value of Augmented Reality

I recently heard a very interesting presentation at the 2019 MIT CIO Symposium, - Why Companies Need an Augmented Reality Strategy, - by Harvard professor Michael Porter and James Heppelmann, CEO of PTC, an industrial software company.  The talk was based on their HBR article A Manager’s Guide to Augmented Reality.

We generally think of products as physical entities built with a combination of mechanical and electrical components, - e.g., appliances, cars, agricultural machines, industrial equipment, - some quite simple and some highly complex.  But, in a 2014 HBR article, Porter and Heppelmann introduced the notion of smart connected products (SCPs), a whole new class of products that, in addition to mechanical and electrical components, use digital components like microprocessors, sensors, data storage, software, and connectivity in a wide variety of ways.  Smart connected products are radically reshaping companies and exposing them to new competitive opportunities and threats, while altering industry boundaries and creating entirely new industries.

Through its first five decades, IT helped companies become significantly more productive, by automating many of their processes, reengineering their overall operations, and reaching out beyond the boundaries of the enterprise.  But, their actual products were largely unaffected.  This is all now changing with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, Big Data, AI, and other innovations whose combined impact is driving the new era of smart connected products.

As the world’s digital and physical infrastructures converge, IT is now an integral part of the products themselves. Digital technologies are designed right into the products.  Massive amounts of product-usage data can now be gathered, stored and analyzed by a variety of applications in the product’s cloud counterpart.  The cloud might also include a digital twin of each specific physical product, that is, a highly realistic 3-D digital model that monitors the real-time status of the digital twin’s physical counterpart, - e.g., a jet engine, elevator or turbine, - and helps make important decisions such as the need for preventive maintenance to prevent a product failure.

Virtual Work Interactions, Context, and Related Subjects

I just read Tripping Down a Virtual Reality Rabbit Hole,- a very interesting NY Times column by technology journalist Farhad Manjoo.  Manjoo recently spent a few weeks testing the Occulus Rift and the HTC Vive, two of the most powerful VR devices on the market. 

“The whole point of virtual reality is to create a fantasy divorced from the physical world,” he wrote.  “You’re escaping the dreary mortal coil for a completely simulated experience: There you are, climbing the side of a mountain, exploring a faraway museum, flying through space or getting in bed with someone way out of your league…  There are some great games on these systems… There are also several useful experiences, like designing your Ikea kitchen in V.R.”

“But if you’re not a gamer and you’re not looking for a new kitchen, V.R. is, at this point, just too immersive for most media.  A few minutes after donning my goggles, I came to regard my virtual surroundings as a kind of prison… I suspect that V.R. will be used by the masses one day, but not anytime soon.  I’m not sure we’re ready to fit virtual reality into our lives, no matter how excited Silicon Valley is about it.”

Manjoo’s reaction brought to mind the work of Karen Sobel-Lojeski, who’s long been studying technology-mediated interactions.  She’s in the faculty at Stony Brook University as well as the founder of the workplace consulting firm Virtual Distance International.  To be effective, she argues, our technology-based interactions must take place within the proper context, defined as “everything around us that helps us to understand who we are, where we are, and what our role is.”  The way VR works, - at least for now, - is by cutting off all real-world context to better immerse us in its simulations, - an experience that as Farhad Manjoo discovered, can be very unsettling.

Social Media Implications for Business

I spent the first week of November as Innovator in Residence at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism.  As part of my activities during the week, Dean Ernest Wilson hosted a conference on Social Media: Platform of Provocation for Innovation?.  The half-day conference consisted of two panels: one on the social and technological innovation being brought about by social media, and the other on the implications of social media to business.  Each panel included experts from USC Annenberg and IBM.

The first panel covered topics on social networks, 3D virtual worlds, immersive journalism, social computing research and a number of others.  It was moderated by Henry Jenkins, who moved from MIT this Fall to join the USC faculty as Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts.  Henry, - whom I met at MIT a couple of years ago because of our mutual interest in virtual worlds, - was previously Director of MIT's Comparative Media Studies program and Professor of Humanities.

The full video of the first panel can be seen here.

I wouId like to focus this blog on the second panel, which I moderated.  The panel focused on the implications of social media to the communications and media industries as well as to organizations in general.  Panelists included Marc Cooper, Jonathan Taplin and David Westphal from the Annenberg School, and Melissa Cefkin and Steve Canepa from IBM.

The full video of the second panel can be seen here.

Communications, Journalism and Media in the Internet Age

I spent the first week of November at USC’s Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism.  USC Annenberg is one of the largest and most comprehensive schools of its kind in the world, with research and educational programs in communications, journalism, public diplomacy, public relations, media, educations and related areas.  It is thus in a unique position to analyze and influence the impact of information technologies on the world’s news, media and entertainment industries, and on organizations and institutions in general.

Last July I received an invitation from Annenberg’s Dean, Ernest Wilson to be its first Innovator in Residence.  This is part of a program Dean Wilson is launching to bring people to Annenberg from different fields, who have real-world, practical understanding of the impacts of disruptive innovations, - because they have lived through it, as I have in IBM.  His letter said:

“ . . . The communications and media sectors are in a state of great turmoil.  Over a relatively short period of time, technological progress has altered everything from the media for information delivery to the revenue sources for the news, media and public relations business.  At this moment, there is a remarkable confluence of social, economic and technological change - all of which affect vital information flows in our democracy.”

“Rather than seeing these changes as threats, I am encouraging my team to view them as unique opportunities to lead and contribute to innovative thinking and action in the communication field.  The Annenberg School is expected to play a major role in shaping this future:  we need to be able to step up to meet the expectations, offering bold and creative solutions for the communications and media industries, and a meaningful education for our students.”   

Dean Wilson’s invitation letter was very eloquent, but frankly, given my strong interest in the subject, he had me at “Dear Irving.”

The 2009 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium

Last week I participated in the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium.  The CIO Symposium is an annual one-day conference on the MIT campus, now in its sixth year, “where CIOs and other senior business executives from around the world gather to explore how leading-edge academic research and innovative technologies can help address the challenges faced in today’s changing economy.”  The theme of this year's Symposium was Sustaining CIO Leadership in a Changing Economy. 

The MIT Symposium consisted mostly of interactive panel discussions, including broad audience participation.  Two key themes kept recurring throughout all the panels and discussions.  One was cloud computing, the other was the evolving role of the CIO. 

As is typically the case, panelists used somewhat different definitions of cloud computing, as they each talked about clouds from his/her own point of view.  This is what you would expect if you agree with the view that cloud computing refers not to any one product or service, but to an emerging model of computing beyond the centralized and client-server models of past decades.

"Serious" Virtual Worlds Applications

Given my strong belief in the promise of virtual worlds applications, I follow closely their ups and downs in the maretkplace.  Virtual worlds continue to be most popular in video games, massively multiplayer online environments and other consumer oriented applications.  The number of applications in serious areas like education, business, government and health care remains small.  So it is particularly exciting when we see working examples of serious virtual worlds applications, because, more than the words any of us can write, they nicely illustrate their potential.  Let me highlight a couple of recent such applications. 

The IBM Academy of Technology comprises the most accomplished technical leaders from around the world who work across the spectrum of IBM's technical activities.  Established in 1989, its key mission is to identify and pursue technical issues affecting the future of the IT industry, especially those that are highly relevant to IBM's overall business and technical strategy.  There are currently about 350 Academy members.  In addition, there is an extensive global network of regional Academy Affiliate, whose membership includes the key technical leaders in each region.   

The IBM Academy is a self-governing entity that elects its own members and officers.  Its independence gives it very broad latitude in deciding what activities to pursue and what recommendations to make to IBM's senior management.  For many years I was a member of the Academy's Board of Governors, and its Chairman from October 2004 until my retirement in 2007.

Every Fall, the Academy hosts a three-day general meeting to help promote communications and a sense of community among its members, as well as to develop and debate new ideas.  Due to the deteriorating economic conditions caused by the global financial crisis all around us, the decision was made in early October to cancel the 2008 general meeting, scheduled to take place a few weeks later, and to replace it with some alternative virtual meeting that would require no travel.

As it turned out, since October of 2007, a small team of Academy members and other experts had been working to develop a virtual world platform for use in Academy meetings.  Besides its large annual general meeting, the Academy holds many smaller meetings throughout the year as part of its various studies.  Since participants in these studies come from all over the world, travel is always an issue, not just because of the expenses, but also the travel time and general wear and tear involved.

An Update on Virtual Worlds

For the last three years I have been quite intrigued by virtual worlds and all the various capabilities we group under this term.  I believe they are ushering a new paradigm for user interfaces, as well as a whole round of innovative, more human-oriented, intuitive applications.

While many are excited by these possibilities, others remain skeptical.  Virtual worlds continue to be most popular in video games and massively multiplayer online environments.  Despite our high expectations, the number of virtual world applications in serious areas like education, business, and health care remains small.  Some think that this is just one more example of the kind of hype that the IT industry comes up with from time to time.

At this early stage, both fans and skeptics are right.  The promise is there, but it remains to be realized.  I, most definitely, remain positive.  Let me attempt to explain why. 

To begin with, what do we mean by serious virtual world applications?  While there will undoubtedly be many different such applications, I’d like to focus my comment on three specific categories.

Web 3.0: Materializing the Conceptual Worlds of the Mind

Last week I was in London, where I participated in a very unique lecture sponsored by Design London.  Design London is an initiative announced last year to combine the creativity and expertise in design from the Royal College of Art, engineering from Imperial College's Faculty of Engineering, and the business of innovation from Imperial College's Tanaka Business School.  It was established to stir together the scientific, engineering, business and creative design communities to enhance business and public sector innovation.
 
The lecture - Web 3.0: Materializing the conceptual worlds of the mind - is part of Design London's STIR lecture series.  The STIR - Simulator, Teach, Incubate, Research - lectures aim to address a wide range of subjects from widely different personal experiences and points of view.  Many times throughout my career have I participate in joint lectures and panels, but never before have I done so with a film director – John Maybury, -  and an architect and designer – Nigel Coates.  That was a most gratifying and stimulating first for me.

Social Pheromones and X-Reality

The MIT Media Lab is launching a new research initiative - X-Reality.  Broadly speaking, X-Reality will focus on the integration between the virtual and real worlds at several levels.  The new initiative aims to bring together related Media Lab projects in this new area, to share their diverse viewpoints and research approaches, and hopefully accelerate progress.  A series of weekly seminars has been organized, and I was invited to speak to the group a few weeks ago.  Let me share some of my comments.

I have believed for a while that the killer apps for new interactive, immersive, visual interfaces will be virtual meetings, and distance learning.  Everything else being equal, physical meetings and classroom learning are much preferred over their virtual and distance counterparts.  But, as we well know, this is not always possible, or even desirable.  That is why telecommunications and networks have been among the most successful technologies in history - from the telegraph and telephone, to the Internet and mobile devices.

It is stating the obvious to point out that many meetings cannot possibly be held in person, especially when the participants are in geographically distant locations, and when different meetings in the same day involve different people in different locations.  Moreover, many workers consider it a godsend not to have to travel hours just to attend a short meeting that they can more efficiently handle electronically from their homes or offices. 

So, the real research question is not which are better, virtual or physical meetings, distance or classroom learning.  Rather, the key question is: what is the right balance of physical and virtual interactions needed to have really effective working meetings and learning experiences?  We all pretty much agree that even though you often have to work with people that you have never physically met, it is far better to work with people that you have met physically at least once, and even better, that you continue to interact with them physically from time to time.

Playing (Serious) Tricks on the Mind

The Turing Test was proposed in 1950 by the famous English mathematician and cryptographer Alan Turing, as a pragmatic and innovative approach to testing a machine's capability to exhibit intelligence.  Turing developed it to help him consider the question: Can machines think? 

In the Turing Test, a human judge engages in a written, natural language conversation with two other parties, whom he or she cannot see. One is a human and the other a computer.  If the judge cannot tell which is which, then the computer would be said to have passed the Turing Test. 

For years the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community has worked hard on developing software that could pass the Turing Test.  One such computer program was ELIZA, developed around the mid-1960s to behave like - perhaps parody is a better description – a psychiatrist conversing with a patient.  ELIZA did little more than rephrase the patient's statements as questions posed back to him or her.  For example, if a patient said, “I am feeling unhappy,” ELIZA would simply reply, “Why are you feeling unhappy?”

A more serious experiment on machine intelligence was IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer, which famously defeated then chess world champion Garry Kasparov in a six game match in May of 1997.   

I was reminded of the Turing Test recently, as I have been watching the huge progress we are making in social networks, virtual worlds and personal robots.  Our objective in these applications can perhaps be viewed as the flip side of the Turing Test.  We are leveraging technology to enable real people to infuse virtual objects - avatars, personal robots, etc - with intelligence, - as opposed to leveraging technology to enable machines and software to behave as if they are intelligent.

"Killer Apps" and Virtual Worlds

Last week I went back to the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit.  It was a very stimulating event, both because of the talks and panels as well as the people that this conference attracts.  I participated in a panel on How Real is the Virtual Web?, which was moderated by Jaron Lanier, a pioneer in Virtual Reality and currently Scholar-in-Residence at UC Berkeley.  The panel included Craig Sherman, CEO of Gaia Interactive; Chris Melissinos, Chief Gaming Officer at Sun Microsystems; and Philip Rosedale, founder and CEO of Second Life, who also gave a short talk - A Brief Look at Second Life just prior to the panel.

We discussed a wide range of subjects, including the use of virtual worlds for serious applications beyond online games and related social environments.  When will virtual worlds become a real business?, our moderator asked.

I expressed my opinion that meetings and learning and training may very well be the killer apps of virtual worlds, that is, those applications that turn out to be unexpectedly useful and help propel the success of a new product or service in the marketplace.  For example, there is general agreement that spreadsheet applications had a lot to do with the initial adoption of personal computers in business.

Some panel members agreed with me, while others thought that it would be a pity if the reason business adopts virtual worlds is for something as mundane as conducting virtual meetings.  But remember, spreadsheet applications were successful not because they were exciting.  The reason that spreadsheets and word processing are viewed as killer apps is because they helped validate that PCs were becoming a tool for real work and would improve personal productivity.

Similarly, I think that virtual meetings and virtual learning and training are helping drive the adoption of virtual worlds in business based on my impressions of how they are already being used by thousands within IBM and in other companies we are working with.  I also see quite a number of universities experimenting with the use of virtual worlds for online courses.

Dealing with the (Virtual) World in our Minds

One of my favorite films is the 1956 science fiction classic Forbidden Planet.  Loosely inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest, the film had a considerable influence on science fiction movies and TV programs over the next few decades, including Star Trek and Star Wars.  But what I really like about Forbidden Planet is its very clever story line.

In the 23rd century, a spaceship is dispatched to a faraway planet to find out what happened to the crew of a previous expedition to the planet twenty years earlier that has not been heard from since.  They discover only two survivors - a grumpy scientist; his young, beautiful daughter; and a friendly, super-intelligent robot named Robby. 

Eventually, we discover the secret of this mysterious planet.  Many years before, the planet was inhabited by a very advanced civilization - the Krell.  Their final project was to build a huge machine designed to let them physically materialize anything they wanted with a mere thought.  They finally finished the machine, turned it on, and were promptly wiped out.

The Krell forgot one crucial thing - the Monsters of the Id.  Even though they were highly civilized, their subconscious minds, with all their fears and hatreds, were unleashed by their powerful machine, and the monsters thus created from their darkest urges killed them all in one single night.

Somehow, Forbidden Planet really touched a nerve in me.  I am not sure if it was the concepts of being able to build a machine that materializes whatever is in our minds, or the really clever plot twist of the Monsters of the Id that the Krell did not take into account in the architecture of their machine. That was quite a design bug.   

Maybe the reason I am so excited about the whole subject of Virtual Worlds is that in our own way we are beginning to have tools that let us make real the fruits of our imagination.  We are not quite able to physically materialize them as the Krell did - a good thing until we learn how to keep in check those pesky monsters of the Id buried deep down in our subconscious - but we are certainly now able to render more concrete the contents of our mind through powerful simulation and visualization tools.

A Kind of 21st Century Digital Animation Studio

On March 22 we held our third seminar in the series Engineering Systems Solutions to Real World Challenges, which is co-sponsored by IBM and MIT's Engineering Systems Division.  The objective of the seminars is to show how industry leaders are using engineering-based approaches – e.g., design, tools, processes, analysis, simulations, etc – to address complex problems in their industry or institution. 

The first seminar by IBM executive Linda Sanford focused on the IBM transformation initiatives which she leads, covering not only the key role played by technology but also the critical importance of culture to successfully transform a complex organization.  Next we addressed healthcare - and in particular the really innovative work taking place at Vassar Brothers Medical Center.

Our latest seminar showcased the importance of applying systems thinking and innovation in a perhaps unexpected area.  The seminar titled Engineering Systems Solutions to Real World Challenges in Media and Entertainment focused specifically on digital animation.  It was led by Larry Kasanoff, film producer and CEO of Threshold Animation Studios, a small digital entertainment company - employing fewer than 200 - that does digital visual effects for films, TV, theme parks, commercials, video games, music videos and private industry.  I have personally known Larry for several years because Threshold has a close technology alliance with IBM.

How Many Words is a Picture Really Worth?

Over the last six months I have been thinking a lot about virtual worlds and visual, intuitive, human oriented interfaces in general.  I am frankly fascinated by our increasing ability to deal with all kinds of applications in a highly visual, interactive way.  After all, that is how we generally deal with the world around us.  And I suspect that is how we usually think about subjects of all kinds, including those involving people. 

For a while now, we have been able to deal visually with IT applications that have a physical representation, be they in science - research into molecules, pharmaceuticals and galaxies; in engineering - the design of airplanes, bridges and microprocessors; or in personal productivity - interacting with web pages, documents and e-mails; and so on.  But now, because of advances in our ability to simulate and visualize just about anything, we are able to bring these capabilities to a whole new range of applications, from video games to learning; from business process designs to meetings, commerce and many other people-oriented activities.    

This raises many intriguing questions in my mind.  Are we better able to deal with large amounts of information visually than in text or verbal form?  Is there a kind of "broadband" visual channel into our brain, vs. the perhaps more "narrowband" text and verbal channels?  How many words is a picture really worth?  And, most important, what are the implications of the answers to these questions for human endeavors like learning, working and shopping?  Let me offer some speculations on these questions.

A Dialogue on Virtual Worlds

Last week I moderated a panel on Transforming Healthcare, Education and Business through Virtual Worlds at the Westport (CT) Public Library.  There is a lot of interest in virtual worlds - and Second Life in particular, as evidenced by the number of recent newspaper and magazine articles by top technology reporters like Kevin Maney of USA Today and David Kirkpatrick of Fortune. 

Many are trying to figure out whether these are serious subjects that go beyond games and entertainment.  Some of us believe that this is the natural evolution of the Internet and World Wide Web, and therefore worthy of the considerable attention being increasingly devoted to it by the technical and business communities, as well as by the media.  Others, however, feel that this is all the marketing hype of a hungry IT industry looking for its Next Big Thing.  Perhaps the biggest skeptic about the future of virtual worlds and Second Life is Clay Shirky, a consultant, writer and teacher who is Adjunct Professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

He, Beth Coleman and Henry Jenkins have started a very interesting dialogue on virtual worlds and Second Life through their respective blogs.  Henry Jenkins is Professor of Literature at MIT, where Beth Coleman is Assistant Professor of Writing and New Media.  They are both also on the faculty of MIT's Comparative Media Studies program.  Here are Henry's, Beth's and Clay's blog entries to kick off their discussion.  I would like to contribute to this civilized exchange by explaining my own point of view on the subject, which I come to from a somewhat different angle than Clay, Beth and Henry. 

A Key Trend for 2007 - and Beyond

As the New Year begins, it is traditional to review key events from the last year and make predictions for the coming one.  I followed that tradition a year ago when I chose Reflections on Blogging as the theme for my last blog entry of 2005.  I had started this personal blog in May of that year, so a year ago blogging was still a relatively new experience for me - as well as for most people. 

What a difference a year makes!  The sense I get from blogging now, - for me personally and for the world in general, - is that it has achieved liftoff and taken off, no longer a novelty but a part of the environment in which we live in, important for some of us, irrelevant for many.  This is not unusual.  New technology-based capabilities often go from relative obscurity to market acceptance in one short year, - from being used primarily by leading edge adopters in research labs and universities, to being embraced by a wider marketplace. 

At the beginning of 1996, for example, most people were trying to understand the implications of the Internet and World Wide Web.  What was surfing the Web all about?  Why would anyone other than teenagers with time in their hands want to do something so silly?  But, by the end of 1996, a big shift had taken place.  In rapidly increasing numbers, people around the world were going on-line, and more and more companies were starting to formulate e-business strategies to avoid being left behind by the growing number of new and existing companies already leveraging the Internet for business value. 

So, let me start the year by commenting on a key trend that I believe will similarly take off in 2007 and become more widely accepted in the marketplace as the year progresses.  I believe that highly visual interfaces and virtual worlds will become increasingly important for interacting with applications, communicating with people and engaging in commerce,  - what we in IBM have started to call v-business.

Experimenting with Virtual Worlds in the Real Marketplace

Last week I was interviewed by Stephen Shankland, a technology reporter for CNET.  I have had a number of interviews with Stephen over the years, all one-on-one.  Some have been in person, - when we met at conferences we both happened to be attending, but most have been over the phone, given that Stephen is in San Francisco and I am in the New York area. 

Last week's interview was not a one-on-one interview but a public one.  I have done quite a number of public interviews and been involved in panels at conferences, sometimes as the interviewee, other times as the interviewer or moderator.  I really enjoy public interviews and panels because the audience participation brings a lot of energy to the experience.

The public interview with Stephen took place at CNET's Second Life office, in their third floor auditorium, with the public invited to listen to and participate.  Stephen and I, through our avatars, sat on the stage, with the audience, through their avatars, sitting in the auditorium.  It is amazing for those who have not experienced it, how quickly you forget that you are in a virtual world rather than a “real” one.  You just focus on the fact that you are on stage being interviewed by a very savvy reporter in front of a live audience - which is what was taking place.

An Unusual Meeting

Last week I attended SC06 - the 2006 international supercomputing conference which this year took place in Tampa.  This annual conference is one of my favorites, where I get to meet so many of the supercomputing colleagues whom I have known and worked closely with for years – people from universities and research labs, government and industry.  The conference coincides with the release of the latest TOP500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.  I am proud to say that once more IBM is very well represented in the list with 237 of the 500 entries including 4 of the top 5 and 44 of the top 100. 

There was nothing unusual about my being at SC06 last week.  The unusual meeting I participated in while in Tampa took place in Beijing, where IBM chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano spoke at a Town Hall event before a live audience of over 2500 IBM employees, partners and distinguished guests.  We also had audiences throughout China at seven additional locations.  They participated in the town hall via the usual video and audio feeds.  But, in addition, we had an IBM audience from many different countries join the event through the virtual world of Second Life.  I was part of that virtual world audience.

Irving in (a Virtual World) Wonderland

I recently joined Second Life (SL), which describes itself as "a 3D online digital world imagined, created and owned by its residents."  Another way to think about Second Life is in terms of Virtual Worlds.  Wikipedia defines a virtual world as "a computer-simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars.  This habitation usually is represented in the form of two- or three-dimensional graphical representations of humanoids (or other graphical or text-based avatars)."

In the last couple of years I have become increasingly interested in 3rd generation user interfaces (3GUI) inspired by advanced gaming technologies such as those found in Microsoft's XBOX 360 and Sony's PS3.  Over time I have become convinced that such highly visual, interactive interfaces will revolutionize the way people interact with IT applications of all sorts.  I have also become convinced that such virtual world capabilities will profoundly transform business and related institutions in society.   

A number of IBM colleagues from around the world, now numbering in the hundreds, have been experimenting with virtual worlds in Second Life, and they helped me get "in-world."  In SL, you pick whatever first name you want and then you can choose from a selection of last names. (You can also select a specific last name by paying a fee.)  Unlike most people in SL, I stuck with my First Life (FL) name - Irving.  Among the second names offered by SL at the time I joined, I picked Islander.  I sort of liked the sound of Irving Islander, and since I was born and grew up on an island – Cuba - Irving Islander felt just right.

Transforming Business through Virtual Worlds Capabilities – it's Déjà Vu All Over Again

Last week I was in London.  One of the main reasons for the trip was to meet with members of the press to discuss our new initiatives focused on the impact of massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) on business, in particular those games that are truly best thought of as virtual worlds or virtual environments, like Second Life.  Joining me for the press briefings were some of my colleagues in IBM who are experimenting with these new capabilities.  Some were physically with me in London, but most were distributed around the world - in the US, India, Canada, Australia and the UK - and joined as part of a virtual meeting conducted in Second Life.

For awhile now, I have felt that one of the most exciting areas of innovation is to recast our interactions with computer applications in terms of the humans that use them rather than the machines and software that run them.  In particular, since our brains are basically wired for sight and sound, it is not surprising that the more visual an application, the more intuitive and human oriented it is likely to feel.

The Importance of Human-Oriented Design to Avoid Drowning in a Sea of Complexity

I really believe that one of the most important and exciting areas of innovation is to rethink IT applications around the humans that use them not the computers that run them.  In fact, I feel that we do not have a choice -- if we want to stay one step ahead of the growing complexity of the IT systems around us.
    
When one examines the characteristics of successful IT applications – those that appeal to large numbers of people -- it is clear that they appeal to us because they are intuitive and thus easy to learn and use.  What makes applications intuitive is the fact that they are designed around objects from the real world that people are generally familiar with, and thus we can bring our real world knowledge and intuition to bear on the applications - they have a point of connection, as it were. 

The applications are then developed for the virtual world of computers, including the realistic simulations of the physical world objects on which they are based, along with added features which good designers will also make as intuitive as possible.  Since our interactions with the physical world are so visual in nature, it is not surprising that the more visual an application, the more intuitive it is likely to feel.

Life and Business in the Virtual World

The IT industry has experienced three main eras of computing:  the centralized, client/server and network eras.  Each is distinguishable by the flagship technologies, products and applications that made them prominent:   mainframes and transaction processing for the centralized era; microprocessors, PCs and personal productivity for client/server; and the Internet, World Wide Web, e-mail and e-business for the networked era.   

While it may be still too early to tell, I am beginning to sense the shape of the next major era of computing.  It feels much more ubiquitous and collaborative.  It also feels much more "intelligent," realistic and human.  I almost get the sense that we are creating a very rich virtual world that complements our physical world, with all kinds of capabilities to help us in our life and in our work.  Let me discuss a few of the key factors that are coming together and that may herald this next era of computing.

The Emergence of Interactive Supercomputing Applications

One of the major forces for innovation in computing has been the acceleration of application run-times from minutes or hours to seconds or less, thus enabling them to become interactive.  The whole nature of an application changes qualitatively and its value improves significantly when it is able to quickly respond to our every action and request.    

I have observed this transition from long-running to interactive applications several times in my career.  The advent of time-sharing and other technologies in the '60s and '70s ushered in transaction processing applications like airline reservation systems and ATMs.  Then personal computers introduced us to spreadsheets, word processing and many other personal productivity applications.  More recently the Internet, coupled with broadband networks, has brought us access to the Web, as well as e-business, search, blogging and new applications of all sorts.

Enabling the Next Generation of Applications

I recently wrote a blog on the emerging innovations in user interfaces that are being inspired by video game players.  I called them 3rd Generation User Interfaces or 3GUI.  I ended the blog by observing that while these innovations are enabled by advanced technologies, like the Cell processor jointly developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba for the PlayStation 3, their real impact will be in the many different kinds of new applications that will be created based on the visual interfaces, real- time interactivity and massive collaboration found in the gaming world.

3rd Generation User Interfaces

One of the most exciting areas of innovation is emerging around what I'd like to call 3rd Generation User Interfaces or 3G/UI.  3G/UI,  inspired by game players, promises to bring highly visual, interactive interfaces to all sorts of applications in health care, education, science and business.  The reason this is such a huge deal is that every time a new paradigm emerges in the way people interact with computers, we've seen all kinds of new applications begin to appear, qualitatively better and different from anything before.  Furthermore, innovation in user interfaces soon gives rise to innovation in the programming and computing models needed to develop and run the new round of applications that they enable.

As a student at the University of Chicago in the '60s, I entered my programs and data onto punched cards, then brought the deck of cards to an operator and waited for the batch job to be run and the output printed.  Many a night, while waiting for the job to run, I went out with friends to Uno's or Due's, amazingly still serving deep dish pizza in Chicago's near North side, or to Taquerias de Mexico, a long gone little restaurant in what is now the Chicago Circle campus of the University of Illinois.  When I got back several hours later, I was hoping that my job had finished, and that I had not made a silly error that caused the job not to run.  Those were clearly slower -- if not necessarily kinder, gentler days.