The ever-expanding metaverse

"Metaverse Evangelist" is not a title you expect to
see on a business card, let alone one from an employee of a century-old
technology company.

But then Roo Reynolds of IBM is not a normal employee.

Living a double life, one as a twenty-something software
engineer and the other as an online four-foot alien, Mr Reynolds flits
between dusty wood-panelled meeting rooms and anything-goes virtual
worlds like Second Life and Entropia Universe.

His job since March 2006 has been to preach the gospel of the online 3D universe to IBM executives and the company's clients.

"I'm bringing the idea of virtual worlds to IBM," said
Mr Reynolds, known as Algernon Spackler in Second Life. "Helping IBM to
understand virtual worlds and how we might use them."

3D bubble

Companies like IBM are being forced to sit up and take
note of these digital realms, 3D worlds populated by onscreen
representations (avatars) of real life people, as they gain more and
more popularity.