The new tools of trade

Since the late 1970s, the vision of the future of the workplace has been the "paperless office". But despite PC workstations and internet connectivity, we're still sitting at desks piled with folders full of printouts, and in many respects the average office hasn't changed much at all. While schemes such as IBM's Bluespace are starting to use technology to reshape office environments, with automated systems changing ambient lighting, alerting colleagues to your arrival or departure – the real future of the office is taking shape far outside its walls.

This shift has been underway for some time. Mobile computing platforms such as laptops, Blackberries and iPhones are breaking down traditional nine-to-five working patterns. But while videophones have been around since 1970 and have long been predicted to spell a decline in business travel, it's only recently that videoconferencing software has made this form of communication really workable; indeed, the workplace potential of FlashMeeting – a videoconferencing development project undertaken by the Open University – was recently recognised when it received an e-Well-Being Award from the UK Centre for Economic & Environmental Development. (UK CEED is a national sustainable development charity whose SustainIT programme, established in 2000, focuses on quantifying the business benefits of flexible working.)

But these examples are bolt-on technologies to augment traditional working practices; what's awaiting us in cyberspace is the virtual office.

The first steps towards this were made eight years ago when US advertising company Chiat/Day commissioned a software company to create a system named "Oxygen", which would allow its employees to create virtual rooms for various projects and to move between the rooms to interact with each other via a form of instant messaging. But the advancement of computer graphics and network connectivity has since enabled rich virtual worlds such as Second Life in which people communicate visually and orally – and it's into such worlds that the ideas initiated by the Oxygen project are starting to extend.

Midlands legal firm Simpson Millar has made its own tentative forays into Second Life, led by Operations Director Craig Jones. "I attended a Second Life lecture that addressed its possible business applications," he says, "but it was going to the lecture itself that opened my eyes to its potential. Normally, attending an event like this would involve incurring travel expenses and imposing my carbon footprint. But once I'd got over the strangeness of the experience, this virtual presentation was just like the real thing; a person in front of me, talking."

As Second Life develops, it has become clear to the likes of Jones that while the media focus on companies selling kooky virtual clothing to make virtual currency, its biggest value to business is going to be its ability to bring employees together and save a great deal effort, time, and money. American technology company Cisco are at the forefront of adapting Second Life for serious business applications. They regularly hold virtual seminars on their products and strategies for staff, other businesses, and whoever happens to be wandering by; not only has it had the effect of educating, raising awareness and developing corporate links – it has simply made the company more accessible.

Indeed, tales abound of CEOs of large technology companies wandering around in Second Life and striking up conversations with graduates and customers – something that would rarely, if ever, happen in real life.

As a utopian vision of easy access and informal communication, the virtual office model has a lot going for it. But what looks good on paper doesn't always translate to successful implementation, and some companies' efforts to embrace virtual worlds have been stymied by underpowered technology and the reluctance of all but a hardcore of geeks to show any interest. Reuters famously opened a Second Life bureau, but this closed late last year; the employee charged with running it, Eric Krangel, outlined the reasons. "The very things that most appeal to Second Life's hardcore enthusiasts," he said, "are either boring or creepy for most people... experimenting with changing your gender or species, getting into random conversations with strangers, or having pseudonymous sex. It was about as fun as watching paint dry."

Perhaps a useful stepping stone towards an acceptance of virtual worlds in the workplace has been provided by American company Rivers Run Red, whose Immersive Workspaces software package works in conjunction with Second Life to encourage collaboration, distance learning and even product prototyping. But Frank Rickett from Advanced Virtual, a company specialising in introducing companies to virtual worlds, is disappointed by the limited scope of the initiative. "It's billed as a solution for future offices," he says, "but it's still essentially a way to share your existing documents. It's not changing the way we think about the way we work."

Aside from the feeling that they're taking an intrepid step into the future, would an office worker who straps on a pair of virtual goggles in the morning rather than jump on a train really notice the benefit? Any saved travel time would be far more likely to be re-allocated to work rather than leisure – cancelling out the benefit from the employee's point of view – and it is debatable whether it would boost productivity significantly.

Any move towards virtual workspaces will inevitably be delayed by a global economic crisis ("the first thing that gets killed off during a recession is experimentation", says Rickett) but US technology consultancy firm Gartner estimates that 80 per cent of active internet users will be in non-gaming virtual worlds comparable to Second Life by the end of 2011. So it looks as though we will become more adaptable to new ways of working. Hardware will continue to improve, enabling smoother transition between on and offline worldsand, crucially, removing the keyboard and the mouse from the experience.

"It's going to get much more interesting," says Frank Rickett, "when we can use our own eye movements to indicate where our focus should be, rather then pressing control and the left arrow key." He also believes, in the same way that companies were sceptical about the internet, that they ignore the prospective benefits of virtual worlds at their peril. "Once people work out how to take advantage of them, there's no question businesses will start to use them productively," he says. "This isn't just some silly game."