Future
According to K Zero, a virtual world consultancy service, there are over 1 billion (1,009,000,000) people worldwide registered in virtual worlds today.
"Things change and develop so fast," Nergiz Kern, an English language educator inside Second Life, told IOL. "But I think virtual worlds will become as normal as the internet is now. Most people who are online will have an avatar and use VW for all kinds of activities from meeting and chatting with friends to learning and doing business."
Wasko, Teigland, Leidner, & Jarvenpaa question how virtual worlds will affect our traditional economic and governance models and argue that firms, governments and leaders should pay attention to their development as they may lead to a "mobility" of labor that may impact national and organizational competitiveness in a way similar to the way that first the mobility of goods and then the mobility of labor impacted competitiveness.
Read more about this topic: Virtual World
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won’t seem important at all.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“But what we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire; the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“If the children and youth of a nation are afforded opportunity to develop their capacities to the fullest, if they are given the knowledge to understand the world and the wisdom to change it, then the prospects for the future are bright. In contrast, a society which neglects its children, however well it may function in other respects, risks eventual disorganization and demise.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)