Philip Rosedale: "Starman"
This Week's Guest: Philip Rosedale
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
“There's a lot more possibility out there than we might initially imagine.”
Approach this episode only if you’re ready to have your mind blown. Our guest today is Philip Rosedale, co-founder of the virtual civilizations High Fidelity and Second Life and an all-around “Starman.” In this episode, we explore far-reaching themes like the limitations of the human brain, the expansiveness of virtual worlds, the possibilities of the human race working together, and the future of a connected 3D reality. Of course, we also touch on fun stuff like pink bunny avatars and pretending to be an astronaut in a cardboard box as a kid.
Philip Rosedale is, to us, a giant walking among us, and someone whose experiments and questioning spirit may well prove to lead the evolution of technology in this century.
Show Notes
BOOKS AND ARTICLES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, the 1992 book that’s called a “gigathriller of the information age,” which had a significant impact on Philip’s visions for virtual worlds
The Documentary film Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me [full feature film]
Melinda’s tweetstorm about the documentary
Moore’s law: the prediction that the number of transistors on integrated circuit chips would double about every two years.
MORE FROM PHILIP
More About Our Guest
Inventor, Founder of High Fidelity & Second Life
Philip Rosedale is CEO and co-founder of High Fidelity, a company devoted to exploring the future of next-generation shared virtual reality. Prior to High Fidelity, Rosedale created the virtual civilization Second Life, populated by one million active users generating US$700M in annual transaction volumes. In addition to numerous technology inventions (including the video conferencing product called FreeVue, acquired by RealNetworks in 1996 where Rosedale later served as CTO), Rosedale has also worked on experiments in distributed work and computing.
