Management in Cyberspace
Virtual reality is often used to mimic hazardous environments — cockpits of combat aircraft, burning oil rigs, the treasure-strewn caves of irritable dragons and so on. Until now, though, it has rarely been deployed to simulate that most hazardous environment of all — the office. But if Sandra Testani of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia has her way, it will soon be possible to hone the black arts of office politics and corporate survival on a computer before you employ them against your colleagues in the real world. Or, from the boss’s point of view, you will be able to practise your skills at “co-operating” in virtual “team-building” exercises.
Dr. Testani’s virtual world is called CIMBLE. The acronym stands for CADETT (which in turn stands for Consortium for Advanced Education and Training Technologies) Interactive Multi-user Business Learning Environment. The idea behind CIMBLE is to let people who are unable or unwilling to meet face to face practise collaborating with each other over a computer network.
To do this, CIMBLE’s software creates a virtual world for up to six participants. Each acts via an electronic representative known as an avatar. A participant sees the world (including the other players' avatars, which appear on screen as cartoon-like images of men and women) from his own avatar’s point of view. Any other characters that the avatars might interact with are played by a moderator, who also acts as Big Brother, overseeing and monitoring the activities of the group and steering things in a suitable direction.
The CIMBLE software allows the avatars to walk around and manipulate objects in the virtual world (opening doors, for example) at the click of a mouse. It also lets avatars (and hence the participants) talk to one another. Most conversations are assumed to be in the open, and can be heard by everybody. But true office Machiavellis will be pleased to learn that private chats are also possible, since the software can work out who is within earshot of whom, and will transmit sound only to those who should be able to hear it.
So far, Dr. Testani and her colleagues have devised two exercises in their new electronic world. One simply brings the participants together around a virtual conference table and lets them chew over an agenda provided by the moderator. The second, however, is more sophisticated. The participants are deemed to be working for a civil-engineering firm, and are sent off to the proposed site of a new bridge to settle a dispute with local residents and officials. After a long car ride and a night in a hotel (all depicted in loving detail by CIMBLE's software), they meet the irate local and try to mollify them. A successful outcome, allowing the bridge to go ahead, is greeted by an on-screen display of virtual fireworks.
At the moment, CIMBLE is being evaluated using the institute’s high-speed (100 megabytes a second) local-area network. If it passes muster there, the next stage will be to modify it for use on the public Internet (which works at between a tenth and a hundredth of that speed), so all that will be needed to make the virtual office indistinguishable from a real one are virtual daggers to allow the avatars to stab one another in the back.
Dr. Testani of Franklin Institute designed a software called CIMBLE which CADETT Interactive Multi-user Business Learning Environment. This virtual world is used to mimic and has made it possible for people to practise collaborating with others over a computer network. Each is represented by an avatar, and their activities are monitored by . With this software, can talk to each other as well as have in the virtual world because the software will only to people who should be able to hear it. Two exercises have been devised up till now. One allows the participants to think over while the other requires them to over the construction of a new bridge. After evaluation by the institute, the software will undergo modification to be put into use on the .