“Attend business meetings and impromptu gatherings with
friends without ever leaving home–enter the virtual
world….“
“As computers move to take a dominant position in the workplace
and at home, the interactions between people change significantly.
Instead of gathering around a water cooler or at a small cafe,
meetings have moved to the Internet. However, with this change of
venue come certain restrictions. No longer can you read a person’s
body language or infer meanings from the tone of someone’s voice.
With many Internet collaboration tools, such as Internet Relay Chat
(IRC) or instant messengers, you can only interpret the words
others type.”
“The project on which I currently work, the Collaborative
Virtual Workspace (CVW), looks to add more meaning to
computer-based social interactions. Instead of relying solely on
spoken words, CVW adds actions, audio and video, and a more
descriptive virtual environment to social settings. Additionally,
users within the CVW environment can create and pass around various
artifacts, such as documents and pictures. This is because CVW
implements a persistent storage mechanism in conjunction with the
environment. Anything created within CVW can be saved for others to
see whenever they like.”