Virtual Workplace

The article "Corporate Virtual Workplace" by Steve Pruitt and Tom Barrett presented an article that explored the extent to which virtual workplaces could become a reality. The article portrays the ability for somebody to wake up and immediately be at work cleaned up and appearing, to the outside virtual world, ready for work. In actuality, the person could be in bed or have been up for meer minutes.

The elements described in the article are not too far in the future as we already have companies video chatting and conducting business through the internet. The actual reality that was described in the article reminded me a lot of Second Life where you can create a virtual world to live in. The article seemed to be a work variety Second Life.

However, what did occur to me in the article is that it constantly expressed how this could increase productivity (through elements like filtering out distractions), but it seems to me that the opposite could also be true. When visiting a coworker's office, Austin finds a mountain scene in the office with blowing leaves, etc. This is obviously an expression of the coworker, but it is also seemingly an enhanced version of the office window, a form of distraction. This, however, is a distraction amplified. Not to mention the ability to alter so many options of the virtual world, there could be more distractions depending on how many limitations are put on the workers by the company. We have to remember that virtual worlds are still controlled by real people with human emotions and flaws.