The next generation of unified communications

The notion of unified communications has evolved greatly over the past few years. But it seems like many people still think of UC in terms of the turn-of-the-century notion of uniting e-mail, voice, instant messaging, etc.

For instance, take this article on eWeek by Jonathan McCormick. It did a nice job of breaking down what UC is and how companies can benefit from it, and it's worth a read. But it stopped short of covering the full scope of unified communications.

I'm talking about a completely unified environment: A 3-D virtual workplace that brings together voice, data, social networking, as well as the workplace itself into a single environment where people can communicate and collaborate.

I expanded on these thoughts in a comment on the article, and you can click over to pick up where I leave off here. What are your thoughts? What's next for UC?