The Man in the Metaverse

Interview with Second Life founder Philip Rosedale — serial entrepreneur, futurist and tech pioneer

As a child, Philip Rosedale dreamed of creating a fully-fledged virtual society and that’s exactly what he did with Second Life. Despite it being conceived many years before, Second Life was launched in 2003. Almost two decades later, and with one million active users and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions, Second Life experienced a boom during the Covid-19 pandemic as the world went into lockdown and more of us spent more time online.

In this wonderfully wide-ranging conversation, Philip opens up about his early influences, his ability to see into the future and how he executes when the tech, not always the world, is ready.

This is an abridged version of our podcast conversation where we also discuss Philip’s latest company, High Fidelity which specialises in spatial audio, where he envisions the field going, as well as the future of virtual reality, education, crypto, live music, how tech can and should be harnessed for good, and how closely he believes the link between virtual reality and reality is.

Newnham: What were you like growing up?