‘Second Life’ creator predicts rapid growth

Another big draw for “Second Life” is the prospect of witnessing or engaging in virtual sex.

Players can alter their characters’ appearance to be as beautiful or sexy as their imaginations — and computer graphics — allow them to be.

Rosedale says he did intend “Second Life” to be a kind of marketplace, but not necessarily a brothel. “The generative idea was that it was a place where you could create things,” he says.
Users own the intellectual property rights to the things they design there. That has attracted tech-savvy designers who craft landscapes of stunning beauty and build objects of infinite cunning.

Rosedale describes a recent invention that caught his eye: virtual glasses that, when worn, allow players who don’t speak the same language to communicate.

“It’s magical,” he says, “to have someone type Japanese (characters) to you and then, blip, words” appear on your screen.

Rosedale says scholars and companies are using “Second Life” to model real-world problems, like the logistics of distributing aid after a disaster, or studying how efficient the layout of a proposed office building will be.

Of course, “Second Life” is hardly a Garden of Eden. One of its servers was hacked last month, potentially exposing users’ personal data, and in-game harassment is a common problem. On “Second Life’s” Web site there’s a “police blotter” of disciplinary action taken against users for various violations of the world’s commonsense code of conduct.

Rosedale says there are no court cases that he’s aware of yet but he concedes a lawsuit over in-game copyright infringement can’t be far off.

Rosedale describes himself as a bookish San Diego kid who liked electronics and power tools from an early age — he even modified his bedroom door to open upward with a garage opener.

He became interested in computer programming and founded his first company while still in high school. It was bought by RealNetworks Inc. in 1996 and Rosedale served as the company’s chief technical officer. He left in 1999, when he realized high-speed Internet connections would soon make it possible to create the virtual world he had dreamed about for a decade. “Second Life” was launched in 2003. It’s grown to the size of a virtual San Francisco, where Linden is based, but its geography and cultural life are so rich and varied that the October issue of Wired Magazine contains a “Let’s Go”-style sightseeing guide.

Rosedale says Linden is “almost” turning a profit. He owns a significant stake in the company, but doesn’t control it. It’s backed by well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firms.

Rosedale says he wouldn’t have predicted many things about the direction users have taken the world.

“I thought that when you came into ’Second Life,’ you’d see, like, ’space port Alpha’ ... a wild mishmash of future visions,” he says.

In fact, there are many futuristic landscapes and cyber-punk characters. But advertisements are everywhere, and much of the world’s residential property looks like Malibu — a reflection of people’s earthly desires.

“They want oceanfront property ... and they want palm trees, and they want a cantilevered Frank Lloyd Wright house, up a little bit from a beach at a pier with a little power boat ... And then they watch the sun set on the deck,” he says.

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