I explored this topic in a presentation to the Seattle Social Media Club coordinated by Katie Hoyne of Text 100. The room was a mix of Seattle Virtual Worlds experts such as Jeff Barr of Amazon fame, Rob Lanphier and Greg Tomko-Pavia from Seattle Linden Lab office, Trevor Smith and Ian Smith of Transmutable, as well as many curious people new to virtual worlds.
This presentation provides some history of communication/collaboration technologies, discusses why VW technologies are different, and surmises that virtual worlds are the next wave in human communication technology allowing us to work and play together while being geographically distant.