Philip Rosedale: How Cultures and Societies Emerge Online

While most of us are active participants of social networks where we share ample detail about our personal lives, much fewer of us lead active lives in persistent virtual worlds where that life is completely deviated from the one in the real world. 

Second Life, created by Philip Rosedale, was an online virtual world platform that took the world by storm in the 2000s. Astoundingly enough, the platform still maintains about one million regular users who, for a lack of a better way to put it, live a second life there. Different from other massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), Second Life never set out to be a game, but rather an organic world where any set of possibilities can happen. As a result, true life, culture and societies started to form.

In this episode, I explore with Philip what were the elements and factors that enabled such a unique occurrence to happen. Moreover, why other major social consumer products that also birthed from that era, the likes of Myspace, FB, Instagram, never took the trajectory that Second Life did.

We discover the importance of enabling people with capabilities that make them feel truly human. Things like photorealistic avatars, having last names, and the ability to build beautiful and useful everyday objects. We learn that culture emerges once there’s curiosity between people and what each other are doing. Philip cites that when people started to build architectural structures like homes in Second Life, they grew invested in their lives in the virtual world and the idea of having neighbors and a community. Finally, contrary to popular belief, it’s quite difficult to maintain multiple lives in the online world, and that many of those who became dedicated to their lives on Second Life felt it hard to balance with their real lives.

Finally, Philip provides an overview of his thoughts on the various mediums and technologies that are powering virtual experiences. A shrewd insight on why VR adoption has not taken off is that it’s impossible to wear it for long enough to truly establish a connection with someone new. He’s excited about spatial audio as a communication medium that promotes more empathy, and he believes AI will play a crucial role in world development in the metaverse, although they won’t and should not replace the role of humans. 

ABOUT THE GUEST

Philip Rosedale is the founder of Linden Labs which created Second Life. He is currently the co-founder of High Fidelity, which is focused on designing rich 3D audio spaces that mimic real life experiences, but more broadly aims to build technology that helps people be together online in the most natural way possible. He is a serial entrepreneur, having previously built and sold FreeVue and was a Time 100 recipient. He holds a physics degree from University of California, San Diego.