Second Life's creator is returning to advise the original metaverse company | TechCrunch

The creator of one of the earliest and most enduringly iconic virtual worlds is returning to his roots. Second Life’s founder Philip Rosedale will rejoin the company he founded in 1999 as a strategic advisor after High Fidelity, the spatial audio company Rosedale co-founded in 2013, invested in Second Life’s developer Linden Lab. The deal includes an unspecified cash investment, relevant patents and some members of its development team. “No one has come close to building a virtual world like Second Life,” Rosedale said in a press release. “Big Tech giving away VR headsets and building a metaverse on their ad-driven, behavior-modification platforms isn’t going to create a magical, single digital utopia for everyone. Second Life has managed to create both a positive, enriching experience for its residents — with room for millions more to join — and built a thriving subscription-based business at the same time. Virtual worlds don’t need to be dystopias.” As companies like Meta launch their own visions for the metaverse, Rosedale has remained a vocal critic of some of the dynamics that underpin the current era of online life, from ad-based social networks to the environmental impact of energy generated by Bitcoin mining operations. While…
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