Here is an interesting article on the rising use of virtual worlds in business and government.

Certainly not surprising about the military as they have been using large scale sims for a long time for training. I do find it interesting that the Navy is using Second Life as a front end tho. And I can truly see the benefit for huge multi-nationals, far easier and cheaper in the long run to have virtual meetings than flying all over the place :)

This just confirms my belief that the Net as we know it will eventually grow into a Virtual world. If nothing else, WoW certainly mainstreamed the idea of a virtual gaming space. And the ubiquitous proliferation of consoles has made the idea much more acceptable as well.

Personally, I would love to see an Otherland style of Net...An overall set of protocols and standards as a framework within which you can really do anything :) Instead of meeting up with your online buddies via chat or voip, imagine just meeting up in the gaming section of the Net and wandering the streets for something interesting to do for the evening :)

It's all becoming more and more possible with faster broadband, computers and cloud computing...

I can't wait!

My 2cp