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That 2004 Wired article about Second Life being the future of work got me, and I spent 3 years defending it
I used to bring up that 2004 Wired piece about Second Life replacing offices in every argument, and I even set up a virtual office for my crew in 2008. Then in 2011 I sat through a 40 minute meeting where my avatar got stuck in a wall while my real client sat there waiting. I closed the account that night and switched back to a $9 flip phone and a paper calendar. Now when someone brings up the metaverse at a job site I just hand them a tape measure and ask how many meetings they've had in the last year that needed a headset. What old article got you for way longer than it should have?
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johnson.adam23d ago
That 2011 meeting detail is rough, but I don't think it proves the Wired piece wrong, it proves the tech in 2011 wasn't ready. There's a difference. I sat in plenty of bad conference calls in that same era, dialing in on a landline, getting dropped twice, talking over people for 20 minutes, and nobody swore off phones over it. Second Life fell apart because Linden Lab never solved the clunky part, not because remote work was a dumb idea. Look around now: half my old line cooks moved into remote dispatch jobs and do everything over video. The 2004 article got the direction right and the timeline wildly wrong, and that's a real thing that happens with predictions. Handing someone a tape measure is a good line, but a tape measure doesn't tell you how many meetings you could've skipped by just sending a photo of the wall you're standing next to.
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