Enhancing Human Connection in the Metaverse with Philip Rosedale and Angela Dalton

Long before the concepts of the Metaverse and cryptocurrency became widely understood, Second Life was already a thriving virtual metropolis running off its own monetary system. In today’s episode, we have the pleasure of hearing from its inventor, Philip Rosedale, about how technology has evolved since he founded Second Life, and how he hopes it is going to continue to evolve in the future. Angie Dalton also joins in on the conversation to share her perspective on what is going on in the virtual world. Our conversation covers everything from avatars to the uncanny valley to the potential of the Metaverse to eliminate loneliness, so don’t miss this one!

“Second Life was this experiment to build one single, large, virtual world that everybody was in together and that had land and would allow people to build things together in any way they wanted to.” — @philiprosedale Key Points from this Episode

• Philip’s two main interests that catalyzed the founding of Second Life.
• Technological changes that took place in the late ’90’s, which were the final push that Philip needed to found Second Life in 1999.
• What the early years of founding Second Life looked like.
• The goal of Second Life, and what makes it unique.
• Philip shares some statistics which give an indication of the size of Second Life today.
• Characteristics built into the Second Life currency that allowed it to work as well as it has.
• Reasons that Second Life didn’t run into many regulatory issues when they were starting out.
• Angie’s thoughts on how to democratize crypto inside games.
• Facets of the Metaverse that Philip is particularly interested in seeing the evolution of.
• The problem that Philip and his team at High Fidelity have developed technology to solve.
• What Philip believes one of the main goals of technological advancements should be.
• A sad truth about our online connections.
• Some of the pros and cons of trustless economies.
• Why allowing for the ability to trade virtually is essential to the success of the Metaverse.
• The next step that is required to take the Metaverse to the next level.
• Philip explains the concept of the ‘uncanny valley’.
• Changes that Philip expects to see in virtual worlds in the next 5 years.
• What Angie is most excited about in the virtual reality space.