We currently witness a new revolution that will undoubtedly change the future of employment and the workplaces of the future: the virtual revolution. In its inherent consequences it will have a massive impact on the business environment of our Western Civilization, comparable with other technical revolutions, such as the steam-engine, electricity and the digital revolution.
In the first part I will outline the twofold properties of the virtual revolution, which on the one hand are the growing networks that connect our world and on the other hand the technology of Virtual Reality and its implications.
One section on the Internet and the WWW will show how this revolutionary network emerged and what we can expect from it in the future, while another section on Virtual Reality (VR) gives a brief, historical overview and a status quo analysis of the contemporary VR technologies and their possibilities.
After the foundations have been laid, I'll give my arguments to explain why we can talk about a real virtual revolution, which is taking place right here and right now. I will, however, give my critical considerations in the same section, in order to disperse any overexcited enthusiasm, pointing out that the virtual revolution is yet a very limited phenomenon and that its impact on the economy will also be within a confined scope.
In a less theoretical section I will give practical examples on how the virtual revolution will change existing workplaces and even create new ones, thereby influencing the future of employment.
Completely aware of the fact that it is not only the virtual revolution that will determine the future of employment and the workplace of the future, I list the most dominant sociological trends and try to show that they will even intensify the impact of the virtual revolution.
The last section will comprise my conclusions and bid the reader farewell with a few open questions, hoping that they will foster reflection and discussion on this important subject.
As an appendix I added a glossary of technical terms which are used within this essay, but which are also frequently used in publications that the reader could come across. The many publications on this trendy topic by hoards of journalists have led to a real Babylonian entanglement when it comes to terms like World Wide Web, Cyberspace or Internet, just to name a few. I do encourage the reader to look up any expressions unknown to her or him, while reading this essay, and I hope that this solution is more satisfying than explaining all expressions within the text.
At the end of the essay the bibliography will offer not only all references, that have been made in the essay, but also lists a couple of recommended publications and periodicals related to the subject.
The digital revolution flooded the world with personal computers and soon the need arose to communicate between each other, which resulted in many small networks being built. One of these networks came into being in 1969 in the United States as a scientific military network, used only by computer scientists and engineers. In 1984 only 500 host servers were attached to this network and by 1987 the Internet had grown to some 28.000 host computers at different universities and research labs, as the network has been opened for businesses and private servers not only in the United States, but all over the world.
While all big communication giants still just boasted about their plans for an information superhighway or how they wanted to wire the world and bring the virtual light for the households, the silent revolution of the Internet established a decentralized, vastly growing open network with high potential.
In 1993 a software engineer at a physics lab in Switzerland prepared the next step in the virtual revolution: the World Wide Web. The Internet with its limited graphical possibilities and discouraging user interface finally went multimedia. The WWW, as a network built on the Internet foundation, comprises a unique potential for graphical display, animations, sound and even three-dimensional representation of the information.
Since then the virtual revolution is unleashed. The growth rate of the WWW is estimated at 50 % per month, with the Web doubling its size every 53 days. A scientific study on the Internet estimates that the Internet will reach over 40 million host computers by the year 1997, and by the year 2000 more than 300 million servers.
It is likely that in the future the Internet/WWW will become more and more important to our daily life and that still isolated networks, such as Reuters and other business networks, will sooner or later connect to the WWW, while companies will shift their activities to the WWW. Also we can expect what is nowadays already in an experimental phase on the Web to become a common application within the next 10 years: phonecalls, CD-quality music, video-on-demand, three-dimensional display and other applications.
Technical innovations start with an idea. Neither does this idea always develop in the mind of a technician or scientist, nor does it in the case of Virtual Reality. William Gibson, a talented, young science fiction writer from Vancouver, wrote about it in his innovative science fiction novel 1983 ”Neuromancer” . He depicted a global three-dimensional network, which he called the matrix, where people not only work and communicate by means of computers and monitors, but where they actually dive in and become a geometrical abstract that lives, communicates and interacts in this virtual world as long as the user is connected to his personal computer set.
Related and similar thoughts have of course been made before 1983, but Gibson was the first to offer a coherent idea in depth. He christened a fictive virtual world: "cyberspace” which became one of the most used termini in the media over the last 12 months.
Early developments of VR were for example complex aircraft simulations for the training of jet pilots. Here the pilot sits in a physical representation of the cockpit and the computer simulates a virtual reality through hydraulic movements of the cabin and through graphical representation of the simulated view out of the cockpit. Similar simulation devices exist for cars and space ships. The main interest in this technology come from space agencies, the armed forces, the aviation and car industry.
A parallel development took place within the entertainment industry. Expensive and sophisticated machines were brought to the market, where players enjoy a simulation or a game and where a virtual reality is created through fast computer graphics, digitized sound effects and hydraulically generators movements.
In the last 10 years strong efforts have been made to develop and improve VR equipment and to make it compatible with personal computers, thereby making it accessible to a broader audience.
The main impulses within the VR industry come from many small American companies, mostly located in California, a handful of large, experienced companies, like Silicon Graphics, Lucasfilm Ltd., Sun Microsystems and some European and Asian companies and institutes, e.g. the Frauenhofer Society in Germany or the Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo.
The general aim is of course the perfect simulation of reality including the visual, the audio, the olfactory and the haptic sense as well as the sensory nerves.
On the visual side two main technologies prevail: most common is the HMD technology, that displays all graphical pictures through two small head-mounted monitors from a very short distance. Another technology places the user in a cube, where all graphics are displayed on the walls.
State of the art on the audio side are three dimensional applications, where sound and music ”flow” through a virtual space and the listener is enabled to locate the sound from any direction.
The olfactory sense is not yet satisfactorily stimulated by VR gear. Both for HMDs and for cubes attempts exist to stimulate the nose through devices that create olfactory sensations on the basis of quick-reactive chemical compounds, but there is still a long way to go until an approximatively perfect solution is ready for the market.
The haptic sense is best simulated through VR gloves with small electromagnetic or hydraulic touch sensors, which create a sensation of touch for human hand, whenever the virtual hand touches something in the Virtual Reality.
The remaining sensory nerves are surely the piece de resistance for the VR industry. In an advanced stage several forms of body suits are imaginable, but also here it is a long way to go until a satisfactory solution is ready for the market. While it is quite easy to create sensations of heat and cold with these body suits, other, more complex sensations could not yet be simulated successfully.
Stimulating the five senses is one thing, but for Virtual Reality interaction is of course crucial. The input of the VR user has to be physically measured and translated into the Virtual Reality. Here, again, many different technologies are on the market. The most famous - but according to my own experience not necessarily the best - solution is the data glove worn by the user. Small sensors on or within the glove transmit all hand and finger movements. An abstract representation of the hand is usually displayed within the Virtual Reality to improve orientation. Another solution is a three-dimensional joystick, which is held by the user and which allows navigation through cyberspace.
Nothing new is of course a voice microphone with digitizer and corresponding voice recognition software, by means of which commands and communications of the user can enter the virtual world.
State of the art at this moment are movement trackers, which are able to recognize any body movement of the user in the real world and transfer and represent it directly in cyberspace.
My personal credo is that the real impact of the virtual revolution on our economy and our society will not become obviously decisive until those two core elements have converged, which means, that Virtual Reality will take place entirely on the global networks and does not evolve seperated from it.
This is a long way to go, but still a target that is likely to be achieved within the next 10 years. This rough estimate can be confirmed by keeping track of the development and spreading of VRML, Java and the WWW in general, as well as the tumbling prices for Virtual Reality gear and the constant improvement of processor performance and graphical display possibilities, especially when it comes to multimedia and three-dimensional applications.
It is important, however, to be aware of the fact that the virtual revolution is at this very moment still a very limited revolution of a specific information élite in certain geographical areas of the world. Let me quote a few figures to strengthen this argument: In 1995, the United States hosted 3.37 million Internet servers, while Western Europe had only 1.04 million servers. The highly praised and feared Asian region hosted only 151.800 Internet servers and this big gap is not likely to close in the course of the next years, as the growth rate is still below Europe´s and the US growth rate. There are whole regions, even continents, in the shadow of the Internet, Eastern Europe has 46.100 servers and Africa 27.100 Internet servers, while the Middle East hosts 13.800 servers and the whole of Central and South America combined only 16.000 servers.
These astonishing figures from 1995 clarify that the virtual revolution, albeit an important, phenomenon of this century, is still far from being a global revolution.
My third argument follows a similar line. The virtual revolution will only have a partial impact on the economy, and thereby on the future of employment and the workplaces of the future.
In the first sector not much will change, as the virtual revolution does not offer any direct application within agriculture. Still, the latter will be influenced indirectly, e.g. through VR improved agricultural machines, better and softer pesticides and agricultural chemicals, whose development was made possible through VR technologies, improved logistical distribution and more efficient markets, functioning on the basis of electronic markets for agricultural products.
The relevance of the virtual revolution for the industrial sector is high. Especially in the field of machine construction and design, logistics and process reengineering the VR technologies have a lot to offer. Also the improvement of information availability and more efficient electronic markets will foster the second sector to a substantial degree. In general we can say that the high-technology manufacturing segment and those companies, who already today make use of modern computer and communication technology, will be the ones who benefit from the virtual revolution the most.
The virtual revolution will have its biggest impact in the third sector. Not only will it change many existing forms of employment and workplaces, but it is beyond doubt that it is the third sector where the most new employment will be created through the virtual revolution, as I will try to show in the next chapter.
The virtual revolution will change many existing professions in different sectors. In this chapter I will give a few examples of how a workplace in cyberspace could look like, whereby some examples are truly fiction, while others have already been realized in the way described.
The virtual manager. In the academic field of business administrations a new movement draws our attention: virtual management. The idea is simple: in reversible model worlds the manager increases her or his learning ability concerning actual, irreversible developments through trial and error simulations and thereby reduces the error rate in daily decisions. The VR technology is also used to improve communication, e.g. through video conferences, to improve information handling and to allow better understanding of very complex situations and relations. The market offers already strong VR software tools, e.g. for virtual portfolio management.
The virtual surgeon. High efforts in the VR industry are made in the field of medicine. Already today VR applications exist, by means of which students can operate on virtual patients and thus train their skills. It is also technically possible to perform an operation, where the surgeon controls the robotized tools, via Virtual Reality and follows the operation with his HMD. In this case the geographical distance between the surgeon and the patient plays no role and even a team of surgeons can operate together from different locations.
The virtual secretary. While a few secretaries will be needed as physical representatives within the office building, most secretaries will shift their main activity into pure information handling. It is no longer necessary to be physically present in the office building, the virtual secretary can work at home and log into the company's network. There the virtual secretary will handle all incoming phonecalls, attend briefings and meetings via VR video conferences and process all incoming information.
The virtual broker. With stock markets being transformed more and more into purely electronic markets, the traditional broker will soon be obsolete. The virtual broker will work from an office or hotel room and log into the electronic markets to make all necessary transactions. All communications with his back office, partners and information suppliers will happen in real-time within the electronic market network.
The virtual professor. A vision of a virtual classroom is likely to become reality within the next 10 years. Already today a distance MBA program exists on the Internet, hosted by the renowned MIT and a couple of Asian universities. Through almost unlimited library access via Internet and enhanced communication possibilites, particularly VR video conferences, it is just a matter of time until a student can follow his studies in Virtual Reality and a professor will hold his lectures in a virtual classroom to a diversified audience, that can attend the lecture from practically any point of the world.
The virtual architect. One of the first commercial applications of Virtual Reality was offered to architects, who could walk in VR through their designed buildings. With improved VR software the virtual architect of the future will create a building from cyberspace and experience every small change to the sketch immediately through the real-time VR representation of the building, even before a single brick will have been layed. The client can inspect the finished building in cyberspace and make all desired changes, before it will finally go into construction.
The virtual astronaut. Strong VR research efforts are made at ESA and NASA to operate space vessels and planetary exploration vehicles by VR remote control. The virtual astronaut of the future will no longer be physically present in space vehicle, but operate from a safer environment. With a perfect representation in cyberspace, the virtual astronaut will be able to perform practically all operations that would be possible within the physical space vehicle, but all inherent problems like nourrishment, physical survival in hostile environments and long-distance travelling will no longer restrain space research.
Through the virtual revolution new forms of employment and new professions will become part of our daily life. In the following I try to give a few fictive examples for possible virtual occupations.
The virtual information hunter. With a growing cyberspace it becomes more and more difficult and time-consuming to filter out the desired information. As all present and future search engines will never achieve the performance of the human, who actively and through the use of search engines browses through cyberspace, the virtual information hunter will sooner or later become a necessary institution within cyberspace.
The virtual information consultant. With a growing information complexity in cyberspace, more restrictions on certain information networks and a growing number of virtual information hunters, the virtual information consultant will advise companies and institutions on their possibilities and net gains from entering cyberspace either as an information supplier or information subscriber.
The virtual security guard. With shielded and independent company and information networks being linked to more open and less restricted networks the security question will top the agenda in many companies. While it is desireable to have free access to more information, it is not as desireable to let more people share, sensitive information. The virtual security guard will develop electronic measures to shield any unwanted virtual information hunter. He will constantly have to supervise the local information homepage or network and track down any unwanted information downloading.
No matter how bright and enthusiastic the developments may look so far, it is important to realize that the future of employment and the future workplaces are of course not only influenced by the virtual revolution. An equally important role will be played by changes in the economical structure and sociological trends.
Taking a look at the sociological trends that are discernible at the horizon, we note that most of them are intensifying the virtual revolution rather than running counter to it. As an example the trend for more flexible working time is getting more and more fashionable within the business world.
Also the concept of time-sharing becomes more and more socially accepted, not only as a remedy for structural unemployment, but also to receive more know-how with the same amount of workplaces in small and medium sized companies.
Portfolio working, a catch-word in labour sociology, encourages that employees work in different companies or departments, thereby creating a portfolio of gainful occupations either over a period of time or simultaneously. This development, which is encouraged by more and more companies, harmonizes perfectly with the virtual revolution.
Thanks to increased communication possibilities working at home is getting more and more popular, especially in the service sector. It does not only have a positive effect on the motivation of the employee, but it rids the company of fixed capital investments for office space, allowing more investment on venture capital, which is especially important for small and middle-sized companies.
All these sociological trends, which can already be observed today in our Western business world, will join forces with the virtual revolution and lead to significant changes for the future of employment and the workplaces of the future.
The virtual revolution is definitely unleashed, but it will take some more years and large entrepreneurials efforts to become a global revolution, that changes life in a similar way as the digital revolution has done. In any way the virtual revolution has an increasing impact on our Western civilization and I'm convinced that it will play a major role in determining the future of employment and the workplaces of the future.
While market forces will drive the VR industry to increasingly better and improved hardware and applications, time will tell if the decentralized Internet will be able to substantially increase its bandwidth in order to keep pace with the growing development of the WWW.
The important question of the sociological effects, that the virtual revolution undoubtedly creates lies beyond the limited scope of this essay. In this regard I have a more critical attitude. I believe that the virtual revolution will also bring along adverse effects for our society, which impacts remain to be seen. Be it as it may, my final sentence is an encouragement to everyone, no matter of what age or attitude, to actively follow the development of the virtual revolution and to look ahead to the challenges that the new realities and new priorities will bring about.
| Cyberspace | A commonly used expression either for Virtual Reality
(-> VR) or for the World Wide Web (-> WWW) or both. I use it here
in its original sense as defined by William Gibson, where cyberspace
stands for the 3 dimensional world that is created within the global
networks, i.e. the 3 dimensional representation of what the WWW (->
WWW) is today.
|
| HMD | Head-mounted display. A device that displays graphical
data directly on the retina of the eye from a very short distance. Every
eye receives its respective, proper view, thereby creating an
approximative 3 dimensional viewing sensation. A HMD is normally worn as
a helmet and is often combined with earphones. The HMD technology is
crucial for any VR (-> vr) application.
|
| Homepage | A virtual location, clearly defined by it´s URL
(-> url) adress, where a certain amount of information is stored by
the creator of that specific homepage.
|
| HotJava | A WWW (-> www) browser, which supports the standard
HTML (-> html) 3.0 specifications, but enables the user to read also
Java (->java) enhanced applications within the WWW.
|
| HTML | Hypertext markup language This is the script code used
for creating 2-dimensional, multimedia information pages on the WWW (->www).
The revolutionary feature of Hypertext is the possibility to link
together different homepages, thereby allowing contextually coherent
navigation through the WWW.
|
| Internet | A global network with a common standard protocol that
transfers information through the ”packet switching” method.
The Internet is completely decentralized with independent routers and
servers all over the world.
|
| Java | An object-oriented programming language, which allows
animations, sound files, interactive games and graphics to be embedded
into a homepage, therefore creating a more interactive and animated WWW
experience.
|
| Net | A widespread short-form of Internet (-> internet)
|
| Search Engines | Programs that search through Internet (-> internet)
and WWW (->www) for the desired information. Most of the search
happens through key words, which are looked up in directories of
homepages (-> homepage), which implies that an information-bearing
homepage has to be present in several directories, if a search engine
wants to find it.
|
| URL | Uniform Resource Locator. Locates a WWW (-> www)
adress with a standardized format, that allows unique identification of
a homepage (-> homepage) location within the Internet (->
internet)
|
| VR | Abbreviation for Virtual Reality, an immersive,
interactive, three-dimensional graphics-based simulation of a virtual
multimedia world, within wich a user can move around and interact with
datas, programs or other users.
|
| VRML | Virtual Reality Modeling Language. This is the
furtherly developed HTML (-> html) and allows the creation of
three-dimensional areas within the WWW (->www). It is an emerging
standard for describing navigable and interactive three-dimensional
worlds.
|
| Web | a commonly used short form for the World Wide Web (->
www)
|
| WWW | World Wide Web, a network of information-bearing homepages (->homepage), created with a standard script code called HTML (->html). The WWW is hosted physically on the Internet and can be accessed through special software, known as ”viewers”. |
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