The key word here is “virtually.” But Stanford University communications professor Byron Reeves has figured out it works, at least, judging from the article I just read by Clive Thompson. Reeves figured out that people actually read work e-mail messages when they get paid in virtual money.

Apparently Reeves, inspired by World of Warcraft, decided to attach a form of virtual currency to e-mail and apply it in a way that would encourage people to use the communication medium more intelligently. It’s called Attent, and it’s administered by Reeves’ company called Seriosity. Everyone who uses Attent gets an allowance of tokens per week. You can attach as many as you want from your allowance to an e-mail. So if you really want someone to read something, you’d attach a large sum.

They tested it at IBM. It worked. Attent was designed to reduce e-mail overload, and it did.