WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 You know, we're going to do things a little differently. 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:06.000 I'm not going to show you a presentation. I'm going to talk to you. 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:11.000 And at the same time, we're going to look at just images 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:16.000 from a photo stream that is pretty close to live of things that -- 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:20.000 snapshots from Second Life. So hopefully this will be fascinating. 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:24.000 You can -- I can compete for your attention with the strange pictures 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:26.000 that you see on screen that come from there. 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:31.000 I thought I'd talk a little bit about some just big ideas about this, 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:35.000 and then get John back out here so we can talk interactively 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:39.000 a little bit more and think and ask questions. 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:42.000 You know, I guess the first question is, 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:47.000 why build a virtual world at all? 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:51.000 And I think the answer to that is always going to be 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:53.000 at least driven to a certain extent by the people 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:58.000 initially crazy enough to start the project, you know. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:01.000 So I can give you a little bit of first background just on me 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:06.000 and what moved me as a -- really going back as far as a teenager 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:09.000 and then an adult, to actually try and build this kind of thing. 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:18.000 I was a very creative kid who read a lot, and got into electronics first, 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:22.000 and then later, programming computers, when I was really young. 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:26.000 I was just always trying to make things. 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:30.000 I was just obsessed with taking things apart and building things, 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:34.000 and just anything I could do with my hands or with wood 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:37.000 or electronics or metal or anything else. 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:41.000 And so, for example -- and it's a great Second Life thing -- I had a bedroom. 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:44.000 And every kid, you know, as a teenager, has got his bedroom he retreats to -- 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:49.000 but I wanted my door, I thought it would be cool if my door went up 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:51.000 rather than opened, like on Star Trek. 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:54.000 I thought it would be neat to do that. And so I got up in the ceiling 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:59.000 and I cut through the ceiling joists, much to my parents' delight, 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:03.000 and put the door, you know, being pulled up through the ceiling. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:07.000 I built -- I put a garage-door opener up in the attic 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:09.000 that would pull this door up. 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:14.000 You can imagine the amount of time that it took me to do this to the house 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:16.000 and the displeasure of my parents. 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:19.000 The thing that was always striking to me was that we as people 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:24.000 could have so many really amazing ideas about things we'd like to do, 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:30.000 but are so often unable, in the real world, to actually do those things -- 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:33.000 to actually cobble together the materials 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:36.000 and go through the actual execution phase of building something 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:38.000 that you imagine from a design perspective. 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:41.000 And so for me, I know that when the Internet came around 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:44.000 and I was doing computer programming and just, you know, 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:47.000 just generally trying to run my own little company 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:50.000 and figure out what to do with the Internet and with computers, 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:56.000 I was just immediately struck by how the ultimate thing 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:59.000 that you would really want to do with the Internet and with computers 00:02:59.000 --> 00:03:02.000 would be to use the Internet and connected computers 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:09.000 to simulate a world to sort of recreate the laws of physics 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:13.000 and the rules of how things went together -- 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:16.000 the sort of -- the idea of atoms and how to make things, 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:22.000 and do that inside a computer so that we could all get in there and make stuff. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:26.000 And so for me that was the thing that was so enticing. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:29.000 I just wanted this place where you could build things. 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:32.000 And so I think you see that in the genesis 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:36.000 of what has happened with Second Life, and I think it's important. 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:42.000 I also think that more generally, the use of the Internet and technology 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:48.000 as a kind of a space between us for creativity and design is a general trend. 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:51.000 It is a -- sort of a great human progress. 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:57.000 Technology is just generally being used to allow us to create 00:03:57.000 --> 00:04:00.000 in as shared and social a way as possible. 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:02.000 And I think that Second Life and virtual worlds more generally 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:07.000 represent the best we can do to achieve that right now. 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:09.000 You know, another way to look at that, 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:12.000 and related to the content and, you know, thinking about space, 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:15.000 is to connect sort of virtual worlds to space. 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:18.000 I thought that might be a fun thing to talk about for a second. 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:23.000 If you think about going into space, it's a fascinating thing. 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:26.000 So many movies, so many kids, we all sort of 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:29.000 dream about exploring space. Now, why is that? 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:31.000 Stop for a moment and ask, why that conceit? 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:35.000 Why do we as people want to do that? 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:37.000 I think there's a couple of things. It's what we see in the movies -- 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:40.000 you know, it's this dream that we all share. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:45.000 One is that if you went into space you'd be able to begin again. 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:48.000 In some sense, you would become someone else in that journey, 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:53.000 because there wouldn't be -- you'd leave society and life as you know it, behind. 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:56.000 And so inevitably, you would transform yourself -- 00:04:56.000 --> 00:05:00.000 irreversibly, in all likelihood -- as you began this exploration. 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:04.000 And then the second thing is that there's this tangible sense 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:10.000 that if you travel far enough, you can find out there -- 00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:13.000 oh, yeah -- you have no idea what you're going to find 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:15.000 once you get there, into space. 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:17.000 It's going to be different than here. 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:22.000 And in fact, it's going to be so different than what we see here on earth 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:25.000 that anything is going to be possible. 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:28.000 So that's kind of the idea -- we as humans crave the idea of 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:33.000 creating a new identity and going into a place where anything is possible. 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:36.000 And I think that if you really sit and think about it, 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:40.000 virtual worlds, and where we're going 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.000 with more and more computing technology, 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:50.000 represent essentially the likely, really tactically possible 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.000 version of space exploration. 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:57.000 We are moved by the idea of virtual worlds because, like space, 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:01.000 they allow us to reinvent ourselves and they contain anything 00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:03.000 and everything, and probably anything could happen there. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:06.000 You know, to give you a size idea about scale, you know, 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:10.000 comparing space to Second Life, most people don't realize, kind of -- 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:13.000 and then this is just like the Internet in the early '90s. 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:16.000 In fact, Second Life virtual worlds are a lot like the Internet in the early '90s today: 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:18.000 everybody's very excited, 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:21.000 there's a lot of hype and excitement about one idea or the next 00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:24.000 from moment to moment, and then there's despair 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:26.000 and everybody thinks the whole thing's not going to work. 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:28.000 Everything that's happening with Second Life 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:31.000 and more broadly with virtual worlds, all happened in the early '90s. 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:34.000 We always play a game at the office where you can take any article 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:38.000 and find the same article where you just replace the words "Second Life" 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:43.000 with "Web," and "virtual reality" with "Internet." 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:45.000 You can find exactly the same articles 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:49.000 written about everything that people are observing. 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:56.000 To give you an idea of scale, Second Life is about 20,000 CPUs at this point. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.000 It's about 20,000 computers connected together 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:02.000 in three facilities in the United States right now, 00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:06.000 that are simulating this virtual space. And the virtual space itself -- 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:10.000 there's about 250,000 people a day that are wandering around in there, 00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:14.000 so the kind of, active population is something like a smallish city. 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:18.000 The space itself is about 10 times the size of San Francisco, 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:21.000 and it's about as densely built out. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:24.000 So it gives you an idea of scale. Now, it's expanding very rapidly -- 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:28.000 about five percent a month or so right now, in terms of new servers being added. 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:31.000 And so of course, radically unlike the real world, 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:33.000 and like the Internet, the whole thing is expanding 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:36.000 very, very quickly, and historically exponentially. 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:39.000 So that sort of space exploration thing is matched up here 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:41.000 by the amount of content that's in there, 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:43.000 and I think that amount is critical. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:45.000 It was critical with the virtual world 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:48.000 that it be this space of truly infinite possibility. 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:50.000 We're very sensitive to that as humans. 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:53.000 You know, you know when you see it. You know when you can do anything in a space 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:55.000 and you know when you can't. 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:57.000 Second Life today is this 20,000 machines, 00:07:57.000 --> 00:08:01.000 and it's about 100 million or so user-created objects where, you know, 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:04.000 an object would be something like this, possibly interactive. 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:06.000 Tens of millions of them are thinking all the time; 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:08.000 they have code attached to them. 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:11.000 So it's a really large world already, in terms of the amount of stuff that's there 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:13.000 and that's very important. 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:15.000 If anybody plays, like, World of Warcraft, 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:18.000 World of Warcraft comes on, like, four DVDs. 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:22.000 Second Life, by comparison, has about 100 terabytes 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:27.000 of user-created data, making it about 25,000 times larger. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:31.000 So again, like the Internet compared to AOL, 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:33.000 and the sort of chat rooms and content on AOL at the time, 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:35.000 what's happening here is something very different, 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:38.000 because the sheer scale of what people can do 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:42.000 when they're enabled to do anything they want is pretty amazing. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:46.000 The last big thought is that it is almost certainly true 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:49.000 that whatever this is going to evolve into 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:53.000 is going to be bigger in total usage than the Web itself. 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:56.000 And let me justify that with two statements. 00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:00.000 Generically, what we use the Web for is to organize, exchange, 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:02.000 create and consume information. 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:06.000 It's kind of like Irene talking about Google being data-driven. 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:09.000 I'd say I kind of think about the world as being information. 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:12.000 Everything that we interact with, all the experiences that we have, 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:14.000 is kind of us flowing through a sea of information 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:17.000 and interacting with it in different ways. 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:23.000 The Web puts information in the form of text and images. 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:28.000 The topology, the geography of the Web is text-to-text links for the most part. 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:31.000 That's one way of organizing information, 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:36.000 but there are two things about the way you access information in a virtual world 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:39.000 that I think are the important ways that they're very different 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:43.000 and much better than what we've been able to do to date with the Web. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:47.000 The first is that, as I said, the -- 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:50.000 well, the first difference for virtual worlds is that 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:53.000 information is presented to you in the virtual world 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:57.000 using the most powerful iconic symbols 00:09:57.000 --> 00:09:59.000 that you can possibly use with human beings. 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:04.000 So for example, C-H-A-I-R is the English word for that, 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:09.000 but a picture of this is a universal symbol. 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:12.000 Everybody knows what it means. There's no need to translate it. 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:15.000 It's also more memorable if I show you that picture, 00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:17.000 and I show you C-H-A-I-R on a piece of paper. 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:20.000 You can do tests that show that you'll remember 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:23.000 that I was talking about a chair a couple of days later a lot better. 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:27.000 So when you organize information using the symbols of our memory, 00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:31.000 using the most common symbols that we've been immersed in all our lives, 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:35.000 you maximally both excite, stimulate, 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:37.000 are able to remember, transfer and manipulate data. 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:41.000 And so virtual worlds are the best way 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:45.000 for us to essentially organize and experience information. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:48.000 And I think that's something that people have talked about for 20 years -- 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:52.000 you know, that 3D, that lifelike environments 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.000 are really important in some magical way to us. 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:58.000 But the second thing -- and I think this one is less obvious -- 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:06.000 is that the experience of creating, consuming, exploring that information 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:11.000 is in the virtual world implicitly and inherently social. 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:14.000 You are always there with other people. 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:20.000 And we as humans are social creatures and must, or are aided by, 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:25.000 or enjoy more, the consumption of information in the presence of others. 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:28.000 It's essential to us. You can't escape it. 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:33.000 When you're on Amazon.com and you're looking for digital cameras or whatever, 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:39.000 you're on there right now, when you're on the site, with like 5,000 other people, 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:41.000 but you can't talk to them. 00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:45.000 You can't just turn to the people that are browsing digital cameras 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:48.000 on the same page as you, and ask them, 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:51.000 "Hey, have you seen one of these before? Because I'm thinking about buying it." NOTE Paragraph 00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:55.000 That experience of like, shopping together, just as a simple example, 00:11:55.000 --> 00:11:57.000 is an example of how as social creatures 00:11:57.000 --> 00:11:59.000 we want to experience information in that way. 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:05.000 So that second point, that we inherently experience information together 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:07.000 or want to experience it together, 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:10.000 is critical to essentially, kind of, 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:15.000 this trend of where we're going to use technology to connect us. 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:20.000 And so I think, again, that it's likely that in the next decade or so 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:25.000 these virtual worlds are going to be the most common way as human beings 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:30.000 that we kind of use the electronics of the Internet, if you will, 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:34.000 to be together, to consume information. 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:36.000 You know, mapping in India -- that's such a great example. 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:41.000 Maybe the solution there involves talking to other people in real time. 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:46.000 Asking for advice, rather than any possible way 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:50.000 that you could just statically organize a map. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:52.000 So I think that's another big point. 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:54.000 I think that wherever this is all going, 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:59.000 whether it's Second Life or its descendants, or something broader 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:02.000 that happens all around the world at a lot of different points -- 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:05.000 this is what we're going to see the Internet used for, 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:09.000 and total traffic and total unique users is going to invert, 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:14.000 so that the Web and its bibliographic set of text and graphical information 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:17.000 is going to become a tool or a part of that consumption pattern, 00:13:17.000 --> 00:13:21.000 but the pattern itself is going to happen mostly in this type of an environment. 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:25.000 Big idea, but I think highly defensible. 00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:28.000 So let me stop there and bring John back, 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:31.000 and maybe we can just have a longer conversation. 00:13:31.000 --> 00:13:33.000 Thank you. John. That's great. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:38.000 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:42.000 John Hockenberry: Why is the creation, the impulse to create Second Life, 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:45.000 not a utopian impulse? 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:47.000 Like for example, in the 19th century, 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:51.000 any number of works of literature that imagined alternative worlds 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:53.000 were explicitly utopian. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:53.000 --> 00:13:57.000 Philip Rosedale: I think that's great. That's such a deep question. Yeah. 00:13:57.000 --> 00:14:02.000 Is a virtual world likely to be a utopia, would be one way I'd say it. 00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:06.000 The answer is no, and I think the reason why is because 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:09.000 the Web itself as a good example is profoundly bottoms-up. 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:14.000 That idea of infinite possibility, that magic of anything can happen, 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:16.000 only happens in an environment 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:19.000 where you really know that there's a fundamental freedom 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:23.000 at the level of the individual actor, at the level of the Lego blocks, 00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:25.000 if you will, that make up the virtual world. 00:14:25.000 --> 00:14:28.000 You have to have that level of freedom, and so I'm often asked that, 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.000 you know, is there a, kind of, utopian or, 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:33.000 is there a utopian tendency to Second Life and things like it, 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:36.000 that you would create a world that has a grand scheme to it? 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:40.000 Those top-down schemes are alienating to just about everybody, 00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:43.000 even if you mean well when you build them. 00:14:43.000 --> 00:14:47.000 And what's more, human society, when it's controlled, 00:14:47.000 --> 00:14:49.000 when you set out a grand scheme of rules, 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:53.000 a new way of people interacting, or a new way of laying out a city, or whatever, 00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:56.000 that stuff historically has never scaled much beyond, 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:59.000 you know -- I always laughingly say -- the Mall of America, you know, 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:02.000 which is like, the largest piece of centrally designed architecture 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:04.000 that, you know, has been built. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:06.000 JH: The Kremlin was pretty big. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:09.000 PR: The Kremlin, yeah. That's true. The whole complex. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:13.000 JH: Give me a story of a tool you created at the beginning 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:16.000 in Second Life that you were pretty sure people would want to use 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:19.000 in the creation of their avatars or in communicating 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:23.000 that people actually in practice said, no, I'm not interested in that at all, 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:28.000 and name something that you didn't come up with 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:31.000 that almost immediately people began to demand. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:34.000 PR: I'm sure I can think of multiple examples of both of those. 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:37.000 One of my favorites. I had this feature that I built into Second Life -- 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:39.000 I was really passionate about it. 00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:42.000 It was an ability to kind of walk up close to somebody 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:44.000 and have a more private conversation, 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:47.000 but it wasn't instant messaging because you had to sort of befriend somebody. 00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:50.000 It was just this idea that you could kind of have a private chat. 00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:53.000 I just remember it was one of those examples of data-driven design. 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:55.000 I thought it was such a good idea from my perspective, 00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:58.000 and it was just absolutely never used, and we ultimately -- 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:00.000 I think we've now turned it off, if I remember. 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:03.000 We finally gave up, took it out of the code. 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:07.000 But more generally, you know, one other example I think about this, 00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:10.000 which is great relative to the utopian idea. 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:15.000 Second Life originally had 16 simulators. It now has 20,000. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:17.000 So when it only had 16, 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:20.000 it was only about as big as this college campus. 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:24.000 And we had -- we zoned it, you know: we put a nightclub, 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:26.000 we put a disco where you could dance, 00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:30.000 and then we had a place where you could fight with guns if you wanted to, 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:34.000 and we had another place that was like a boardwalk, kind of a Coney Island. 00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:37.000 And we laid out the zoning, but of course, 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:40.000 people could build all around it however they wanted to. 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:44.000 And what was so amazing right from the start was that the idea 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:48.000 that we had put out in the zoning concept, basically, 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:50.000 was instantly and thoroughly ignored, 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:53.000 and like, two months into the whole thing, 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:56.000 -- which is really a small amount of time, even in Second Life time -- 00:16:56.000 --> 00:17:00.000 I remember the users, the people who were then using Second Life, 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:04.000 the residents came to me and said, we want to buy the disco -- 00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:08.000 because I had built it -- we want to buy that land and raze it 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:11.000 and put houses on it. And I sold it to them -- 00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:13.000 I mean, we transferred ownership and they had a big party 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:15.000 and blew up the entire building. 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:19.000 And I remember that that was just so telling, you know, 00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:21.000 that you didn't know exactly what was going to happen. 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:24.000 When you think about stuff that people have built that's popular -- NOTE Paragraph 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:27.000 JH: CBGB's has to close eventually, you know. That's the rule. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:32.000 PR: Exactly. And it -- but it closed on day one, basically, in Internet time. 00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:36.000 You know, an example of something -- pregnancy. 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:39.000 You can have a baby in Second Life. 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:45.000 This is done entirely using, kind of, the tools that are built into Second Life, 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:49.000 so the innate concept of becoming pregnant and having a baby, of course -- 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:54.000 Second Life is, at the platform level, at the level of the company -- at Linden Lab -- 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:57.000 Second Life has no game properties to it whatsoever. 00:17:57.000 --> 00:17:59.000 There is no attempt to structure the experience, 00:17:59.000 --> 00:18:02.000 to make it utopian in that sense that we put into it. 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:05.000 So of course, we never would have put a mechanism for having babies or, you know, 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:08.000 taking two avatars and merging them, or something. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:13.000 But people built the ability to have babies and care for babies 00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:17.000 as a purchasable experience that you can have in Second Life and so -- 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:20.000 I mean, that's a pretty fascinating example of, you know, 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:22.000 what goes on in the overall economy. 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:24.000 And of course, the existence of an economy is another idea. 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:27.000 I didn't talk about it, but it's a critical feature. 00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:30.000 When people are given the opportunity to create in the world, 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:32.000 there's really two things they want. 00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:35.000 One is fair ownership of the things they create. 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:37.000 And then the second one is -- if they feel like it, 00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:39.000 and they're not going to do it in every case, but in many they are -- 00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:43.000 they want to actually be able to sell that creation 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:45.000 as a way of providing for their own livelihood. 00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:48.000 True on the Web -- also true in Second Life. 00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:50.000 And so the existence of an economy is critical. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.000 JH: Questions for Philip Rosedale? Right here. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:57.000 (Audience: Well, first an observation, which is that you look like a character.) NOTE Paragraph 00:18:57.000 --> 00:19:02.000 JH: The observation is, Philip has been accused of looking like a character, 00:19:02.000 --> 00:19:04.000 an avatar, in Second Life. 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:06.000 Respond, and then we'll get the rest of your question. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:08.000 PR: But I don't look like my avatar. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:10.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:12.000 How many people here know what my avatar looks like? 00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:14.000 That's probably not very many. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:16.000 JH: Are you ripping off somebody else's avatar with that, sort of -- 00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:19.000 PR: No, no. I didn't. One of the other guys at work had a fantastic avatar -- 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:22.000 a female avatar -- that I used to be once in a while. 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:28.000 But my avatar is a guy wearing chaps. 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:32.000 Spiky hair -- spikier than this. Kind of orange hair. 00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:37.000 Handlebar mustache. Kind of a Village People sort of a character. 00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:39.000 So, very cool. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:39.000 --> 00:19:41.000 JH: And your question? NOTE Paragraph 00:19:41.000 --> 00:19:44.000 (Audience: [Unclear].) NOTE Paragraph 00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:50.000 JH: The question is, there appears to be a lack of cultural fine-tuning in Second Life. 00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:52.000 It doesn't seem to have its own culture, 00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:54.000 and the sort of differences that exist in the real world 00:19:54.000 --> 00:19:57.000 aren't translated into the Second Life map. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:57.000 --> 00:19:59.000 PR: Well, first of all, we're very early, 00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:02.000 so this has only been going on for a few years. 00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:05.000 And so part of what we see is the same evolution of human behavior 00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:07.000 that you see in emerging societies. 00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:11.000 So a fair criticism -- is what it is -- of Second Life today is that 00:20:11.000 --> 00:20:16.000 it's more like the Wild West than it is like Rome, from a cultural standpoint. 00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:22.000 That said, the evolution of, and the nuanced interaction that creates culture, 00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:25.000 is happening at 10 times the speed of the real world, 00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:30.000 and in an environment where, if you walk into a bar in Second Life, 00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:33.000 65 percent of the people there are not in the United States, 00:20:33.000 --> 00:20:38.000 and in fact are speaking their, you know, various and different languages. 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:40.000 In fact, one of the ways to make money in Second Life 00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:45.000 is to make really cool translators that you drag onto your body 00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:47.000 and they basically, kind of, pop up on your screen 00:20:47.000 --> 00:20:50.000 and allow you to use Google or Babel Fish 00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:53.000 or one of the other online text translators to on-the-fly 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:58.000 translate spoken -- I'm sorry -- typed text between individuals. 00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:02.000 And so, the multicultural nature and the sort of cultural melting pot 00:21:02.000 --> 00:21:05.000 that's happening inside Second Life is quite -- 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:10.000 I think, quite remarkable relative to what in real human terms 00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:12.000 in the real world we've ever been able to achieve. 00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:15.000 So, I think that culture will fine-tune, it will emerge, 00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.000 but we still have some years to wait while that happens, 00:21:19.000 --> 00:21:21.000 as you would naturally expect. NOTE Paragraph 00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:24.000 JH: Other questions? Right here. NOTE Paragraph 00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:26.000 (Audience: What's your demographic?) NOTE Paragraph 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:28.000 JH: What's your demographic? 00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:30.000 PR: So, the question is, what's the demographic. 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:35.000 So, the average age of a person in Second Life is 32, 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:40.000 however, the use of Second Life increases dramatically 00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:45.000 as your physical age increases. So as you go from age 30 to age 60 -- 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:47.000 and there are many people in their sixties using Second Life -- 00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:52.000 this is also not a sharp curve -- it's very, very distributed -- 00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:56.000 usage goes up in terms of, like, hours per week by 40 percent 00:21:56.000 --> 00:22:00.000 as you go from age 30 to age 60 in real life, so there's not -- 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:02.000 many people make the mistake of believing that Second Life 00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:07.000 is some kind of an online game. Actually it's generally unappealing -- 00:22:07.000 --> 00:22:10.000 I'm just speaking broadly and critically -- 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:12.000 it's not very appealing to people that play online video games, 00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:16.000 because the graphics are not yet equivalent to -- 00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:17.000 I mean, these are very nice pictures, 00:22:17.000 --> 00:22:19.000 but in general the graphics are not quite equivalent 00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:23.000 to the fine-tuned graphics that you see in a Grand Theft Auto 4. 00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:26.000 So average age: 32. I mentioned 00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:28.000 65 percent of the users are not in the United States. 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:31.000 The distribution amongst countries is extremely broad. NOTE Paragraph 00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:34.000 There's users from, you know, virtually every country in the world now in Second Life. 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:38.000 The dominant ones are -- if you take the UK and Europe, 00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:42.000 together they make up about 55 percent of the usage base in Second Life. 00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:44.000 In terms of psychographic -- 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:49.000 oh, men and women: men and women are almost equally matched in Second Life, 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:54.000 so about 45 percent of the people online right now on Second Life are women. 00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:56.000 Women use Second Life, though, 00:22:56.000 --> 00:22:59.000 about 30 to 40 percent more, on an hours basis, than men do, 00:22:59.000 --> 00:23:01.000 meaning that more men sign up than women, 00:23:01.000 --> 00:23:04.000 and more women stay and use it than men. 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:06.000 So that's another demographic fact. 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:11.000 In terms of psychographic, you know, the people in Second Life 00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:15.000 are remarkably dissimilar relative to what you might think, 00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:17.000 when you go in and talk to them and meet them, and I would, you know, 00:23:17.000 --> 00:23:19.000 challenge you to just do this and find out. 00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:22.000 But it's not a bunch of programmers. 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:26.000 It's not easy to describe as a demographic. 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:30.000 If I had to just sort of paint a broad picture, I'd say, remember the people 00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.000 who were really getting into eBay in the first few years of eBay? 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:37.000 Maybe a little bit like that: in other words, people who are early adopters. 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:40.000 They tend to be creative. They tend to be entrepreneurial. 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.000 A lot of them -- about 55,000 people so far -- are cash-flow positive: 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:47.000 they're making money from what -- I mean, real-world money -- 00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:51.000 from what they're doing in Second Life, so it's a very build -- 00:23:51.000 --> 00:23:54.000 still a creative, building things, build-your-own-business 00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:56.000 type of an orientation. So, that's it. NOTE Paragraph 00:23:56.000 --> 00:23:58.000 JH: You describe yourself, Philip, as someone who was really creative 00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:02.000 when you were young and, you know, liked to make things. 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:05.000 I mean, it's not often that you hear somebody 00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:07.000 describe themselves as really creative. 00:24:07.000 --> 00:24:11.000 I suspect that's possibly a euphemism for C student 00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:14.000 who spent a lot of time in his room? Is it possible? NOTE Paragraph 00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:15.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.000 PR: I was a -- there were times I was a C student. You know, it's funny. 00:24:19.000 --> 00:24:21.000 When I got to college -- I studied physics in college -- 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:23.000 and I got really -- it was funny, 00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:28.000 because I was definitely a more antisocial kid. I read all the time. 00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:33.000 I was shy. I don't seem like it now, but I was very shy. 00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:35.000 Moved around a bunch -- had that experience too. 00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:38.000 So I did, kind of, I think, live in my own world, 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:41.000 and obviously that helps, you know, engage your real interest in something. NOTE Paragraph 00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:44.000 JH: So you're on your fifth life at this point? NOTE Paragraph 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:50.000 PR: If you count, yeah, cities. So -- but I did -- 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.000 and I didn't do -- I think I didn't do as well in school as I could have. I think you're right. 00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:58.000 I wasn't, like, an obsessed -- you know, get A's kind of guy. 00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:00.000 I was going to say, I had a great social experience 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:02.000 when I went to college that I hadn't had before, 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:05.000 a more fraternal experience, where I met six or seven other guys 00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:08.000 who I studied physics with, and I was very competitive with them, 00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:12.000 so then I started to get A's. But you're right: I wasn't an A student. NOTE Paragraph 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:14.000 JH: Last question. Right here. NOTE Paragraph 00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:17.000 (Audience: In the pamphlet, there's a statement -- ) NOTE Paragraph 00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:19.000 JH: You want to paraphrase that? NOTE Paragraph 00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:21.000 PR: Yeah, so let me restate that. 00:25:21.000 --> 00:25:24.000 So, you're saying that in the pamphlet there's a statement 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:28.000 that we may come to prefer our digital selves to our real ones -- 00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:32.000 our more malleable or manageable digital identities to our real identities -- 00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:35.000 and that in fact, much of human life and human experience 00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:38.000 may move into the digital realm. 00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:41.000 And then that's kind of a horrifying thought, of course. 00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:45.000 That's a frightening change, frightening disruption. 00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:48.000 I guess, and you're asking, what do I think about that? How do I -- NOTE Paragraph 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:50.000 JH: What's your response to the people who would say, that's horrifying? NOTE Paragraph 00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:52.000 (Audience: If someone would say to you, I find that disturbing, 00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:54.000 what would be your response?) NOTE Paragraph 00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:57.000 PR: Well, I'd say a couple of things. 00:25:57.000 --> 00:26:00.000 One is, it's disturbing like the Internet or electricity was. 00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.000 That is to say, it's a big change, but it isn't avoidable. 00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:09.000 So, no amount of backpedaling or intentional behavior 00:26:09.000 --> 00:26:12.000 or political behavior is going to keep these technology changes 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:14.000 from connecting us together, 00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:16.000 because the basic motive that people have -- 00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:20.000 to be creative and entrepreneurial -- is going to drive energy 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:23.000 into these virtual worlds in the same way that it has with the Web. 00:26:23.000 --> 00:26:28.000 So this change, I believe, is a huge disruptive change. NOTE Paragraph 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:32.000 Obviously, I'm the optimist and a big believer in what's going on here, 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:36.000 but I think that as -- even a sober, you know, the most sober, 00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:39.000 disconnected thinker about this, looking at it from the side, 00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:41.000 has to conclude, based on the data, 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:43.000 that with those kinds of economic forces at play, 00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:46.000 there is definitely going to be a sea change, 00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:49.000 and that change is going to be intensely disruptive 00:26:49.000 --> 00:26:53.000 relative to our concept of our very lives and being, 00:26:53.000 --> 00:26:55.000 and our identities, as well. 00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:57.000 I don't think we can get away from those changes. 00:26:57.000 --> 00:27:00.000 I think generally, we were talking about this -- 00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:06.000 I think that generally being present in a virtual world and being challenged by it, 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:10.000 being -- surviving there, having a good life there, so to speak, 00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:13.000 is a challenge because of the multiculturality of it, 00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:18.000 because of the languages, because of the entrepreneurial richness of it, 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:21.000 the sort of flea market nature, if you will, of the virtual world today. NOTE Paragraph 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:27.000 It puts challenges on us to rise to. We must be better than ourselves, in many ways. 00:27:27.000 --> 00:27:30.000 We must learn things and, you know, be more tolerant, 00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:36.000 and be smarter and learn faster and be more creative, perhaps, 00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:38.000 than we are typically in our real lives. 00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:40.000 And I think that if that is true of virtual worlds, 00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.000 then these changes, though scary -- and, I say, inevitable -- 00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:46.000 are ultimately for the better, 00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:49.000 and therefore something that we should ride out. 00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:53.000 But I would say that -- and many other authors and speakers about this, 00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:56.000 other than me, have said, you know, fasten your seat belts 00:27:56.000 --> 00:27:59.000 because the change is coming. There are going to be big changes. 00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:01.000 JH: Philip Rosedale, thank you very much. NOTE Paragraph 00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:06.000 (Applause)