Second Life creator returns to lay claim to the Metaverse

cointelegraph.com:

The founder of Linden Lab’s virtual online world Second Life Philip Rosedale will be rejoining the project as a strategic advisor to guide its entry to the Metaverse.

While he is negative on content interoperability in the Metaverse describing it as “a total fail” he believes an NFT based future is the way forward long term.

Second Life is an online social game universe that launched in 2003, when the word “Metaverse” was only being used by Neal Stephenson fans.

Since leaving his position as CEO of Linden Labs in 2008, Rosedale has made a name for himself in the virtual reality (VR) ecosystem. In 2013, he created the social VR company, High Fidelity.

Philip Rosedale returning to Linden Labs (breaking news today) definitely reminds me of Steve Jobs in the 90s returning to Apple #secondlife #metaverse

In a Jan. 13 announcement, High Fidelity said it is investing in Linden Labs with both cash and what is described as “distributed computing patents,” including two regarding community moderation in decentralized environments.

“Virtual worlds don’t need to be dystopias,” Rosedale said.

In an interview with Cnet Technology, Rosedale said that beyond exploring the possibility of adding VR tech to Second Life, advanced avatar animations using facial tracking cameras could also be a future possibility.

"Using the webcam to animate an avatar, that's a really interesting in-between," he said. "Not enough people are looking at that space, that's one that I've spent a lot of time thinking about."

As for the possibility of incorporating new ideas like interoperable non-fungible items into Second Life, Rosedale will need some convincing. In the Metaverse, interoperable content are items which can be bought on one platform and carried over to