UPDATE, January 21: Bumped up for weekend conversation!
On the day when Philip Rosedale announced his return to Second Life and his plans to compete with Big Tech's "ad-driven behavior modification" would-be Metaverse projects, he and I had a long chat about just that subject — listen above. This audio is actually a rough cut for an upcoming podcast series that Philip and I are developing, but he very coolly gave New World Notes readers this exclusive early listen sneak preview.
Here's some highlights from our chat:
0:00 – 2:45 : How I become Hamlet Au and Second Life's embedded journalist, and meeting the legendary hacker Catherine Omega in one of my very first visits. (Who Philip recently reconnected with in-world, as she still visits from time to time.)
2:45 – 4:50: Walking across the single-shard world of Second Life — and the missing opportunity of missing serendipity of metaverse platforms without a single contiguous world.
4:51 – 8:20: The end of SL's telehubs and whether we should remove Second Life's point to point teleportation, which leads to Philip talking about Neal Stephenson's recent novel Fall; or Dodge in Hell, and a prototype he built while at High Fidelity. We compare and contrast that with Decentraland and other crytpo-based virtual world platforms.
8:21 – 11:39: How much detail with avatars are needed to make a virtual world seem real? We compare Minecraft and ROBLOX's blocky avatars with Second Life's ultra-real avatars, which have shaped SL to evolve into a fashion world. But will adults use ROBLOX and Minecraft, which are mainly popular with kids?
11:35 – 12:30: Is Second Life mainly driven by meeting new people or having fun with existing friends? I say the former because SL is too difficult for 99% of people to use and doesn't have a mobile app.
12:31 – 21:15: Remembering the War of the Jessie Wall and the combat zone that led to emergent social protest during the US-led invasion of Iraq. Philip and I relate this to the state of avatar-based civility and conflict, as compared to algorithmically-leveraged interaction on Facebook and other social networks. This is partly because because our avatars adopt the unwritten rules of eye contact and personal space, according to a report by Nick Yee at Stanford. Philip this first hand when we would read flame posts by users on the official messaging board, but then have a civil interaction with the same users in the virtual space.
21:16-23:15: Philip delves into "the horrible horrible rabbit hole" of monetizing user engagement on social media, then makes a fascinating observation: Second Life actually monetizes as well per user as Google Ads does: "You absolutely can make a virtual world where people don't hurt each other… you just need the right business model." I relate that to SL and now VRChat are proving that a positive community and great community can make that possible.
23:16 – 25:00: Philip and I talk about VRChat, its evolving user community — and we ask VRChat users to recommend places for us to visit.
25:01 – 31:00: The dilemma of content moderation in virtual worlds. I struggle a touch with this question, because it's "kinda unruly", leading established Second Life users to avoid noobs. Except, of course, the trolls. This is where we talk about the possibility of returning SL's old user-to-user social/creativity rating system ("I think we can experiment with that", says Philip), while acknowledging the dystopian implications featured in Black Mirror. Philip delves into mechanics to prevent gaming such a system. I mention VRChat's karmic system based on trustworthiness, which seems to be working, overall.
31:01 – 34:55: On the economy of the metaverse and the "black market" of VRChat where some 1000+ content creators are making so or all of their income from their platform. Philip compares the UGC monetization rates of the Second Life to ROBLOX (based on its stock filing), and says that more people (1600) make over $10,000 USD/year from their content in Second Life, than ROBLOX — fewer than 1200. This is seriously mind-boggling, because Second Life only has about 600,000 monthly active users, compared to ROBLOX's 200 million MAU. As I note, SL has the rare distinction of being a metaverse platform where the community content creators make about as much revenue as the company itself. Philip points out that Linden Lab takes about 10% of Second Life's total virtual world economy as revenue.
34:56 – 40:22: "When's the tax revolt [in ROBLOX] start?" We talk about the legendary tax revolt in Second Life with Philip getting into the logic for Linden Lab initially imposing a precise cost for any bandwidth and server space consumed by users when creating content ("kinda like web3") — and the unintended consequences this led to. (I.E., big ass tea crates everywhere.)
40:45 – 49:44 : "When is Linden Lab going to lower the price of Second Life sims?" Philip redirects that question to discuss the physical age of the world and other issues that alienate people from using Second Life. I argue there should be a brand refresh and a new engine integrated in the viewer. This conversation shifts to Baby Boomers and the generational shift, its effect on the economy (and Second Life itself), and the literally dying off of SL's early user base. But then again, can the new metaverse platforms evolve and grow through new users over time? (Then again, aging social networks are also dealing with this challenge.)
49:45 – End: Speaking of aging, we talk about the oldest user-generated content in Second Life that still exists there (from Steller Sunshine now 20 years old!). That brings me back to my idea of having a Classic Grid alongside a New Grid option that runs on Unity and exists as log-in buttons in the same viewer. Philip says he plans to log back in and rez old content from his avatar inventory, and I talk about my official Snowcrash shrine in Second Life. (An NFT before the NFT was cool.)
More annotations as I keep listen – refresh this post!
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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