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There is a lot of excitement and hype around the phrases “virtual worlds” and “immersive media.” The truth is that, for the last 100 years, media has constantly and increasingly become more compelling and involving, from silent films through radio and television to the internet. As each of these new forms of communications grew, there occurred discontinuities that offered yet more capabilities, challenges and opportunities. Silent films became talkies, radio went stereo and portable, and television has become a sensual and vibrant medium. Those who were prepared for change, triumphed and those who weren’t, disappeared.
Now, it’s the internet’s turn to take the next step.
As hard as it may be to believe, the fundamental capabilities of the internet have remained fairly static since the late 1990s. Animated GIFs, Flash, streaming video/audio, and chat have constituted a stable toolset, Lego pieces, for craftsmen to build with. They continue to string these “notes” together to make amazing music: Wikis, Youtube, MySpace, podcasts. But creativity is now pushing the limit of the older technologies and demands the addition of new ones. Thus the excitement and buzz around virtual worlds. To the traditional “call and response” web experience, virtual worlds add a sense of immediacy and the reality of shared physical locations and real-time one-to-one or one-to-many interactions.
The promise of these capabilities is almost dizzying: ranging from education to healthcare to commerce. Missteps in exploring these new worlds, though, can be costly both in terms of wasted effort and lost opportunity.
It is Involve’s mission, in conjunction with our partners, to provide our clients with the comprehensive, fit-to-need programs that go beyond technology development and deployment to helping your organization realize the real benefits of this exciting new phase of internet experience.
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