Interview with Philip Linden Chat Log

For those of you who missed it, this was my interview with Philip Rosdale, the creator of SL:


You shout: Ok, our next guest tonight is the creator of SL itself
You shout: Everyone please give a warm welcome to Phillip Linden!
You shout: Hi Phil, great to have you on the show
Philip Linden: Thanks... so nice to invite me...
You shout: So you are the creator of SL
Philip Linden: what with all the lag!
Philip Linden shouts: Right
Philip Linden shouts: Thanks for inviting me!
Philip Linden shouts: Does any one have any extra lag for me
Ezhar Fairlight: i can spare some i think
Philip Linden shouts: Indeed
Philip Linden shouts: Well I'm in Boston
You shout: Well I'm curious as to where you got inspiration for SL
Philip Linden shouts: Ahh...
Philip Linden shouts: Inspiration.
You shout: Where did someting like this hit you?
Philip Linden shouts: I'd like to say in the shower
Philip Linden shouts: Or maybe reading Snowcrash
Philip Linden shouts: But the truth is...
You shout: Heh, showering would be an interesting place for this to hit you...
Philip Linden shouts: I've been into doing this sort of thing for a very long time
Philip Linden shouts: When I saw the internet,
Philip Linden shouts: I really wanted it to be this sort of thing
Philip Linden shouts: Something that connected us in new ways...
Philip Linden shouts: Not just a big library
Philip Linden shouts: I didn't try and really do it, though,
You: Np
Philip Linden shouts: Until I felt that latency would be low enough
Philip Linden shouts: Clearly we are still bleeding edge,
Philip Linden shouts: But we've come a long way.
You shout: That's definetly a good way to look at it though, from a revolutionaries perspective
You shout: I understand you were the head of technologies at Real Networks
Philip Linden: Yep... but I wasn't responsible for the RealOne player
You shout: Haha good
Ezhar Fairlight: good!
James Miller shouts: Thank god
Philip Linden shouts: I was the CTO
Philip Linden shouts: And I developed RealVideo
You shout: Wow, you were pretty high up there
Philip Linden shouts: I worked before that on video compression.
Philip Linden shouts: Which in 1995 was really fun.
You shout: This games infastructure is based on the way RealVideo compressed video, is that correct?
Philip Linden shouts: Well sort of...
Philip Linden shouts: Things like the land and the images are compressed
Philip Linden shouts: using stuff that was worked on at that time by folks like Real
Philip Linden shouts: We've had to invent some other stuff as well along the way
Philip Linden shouts: Like very heavily compressed geometry
Philip Linden shouts: For objects
Philip Linden shouts: But there are some similar technologies, yes.
You shout: Now has the technology from SL affected any other games that you know of?
Philip Linden shouts: Hmmm.... what a great Question.
Philip Linden shouts: Well I'd say that its nice to be right!
Philip Linden shouts: We pioneered the idea that the right sort of environment
Philip Linden shouts: in which everything was built by you guys
Philip Linden shouts: Could actually be fun
Philip Linden shouts: Let me tell you
Philip Linden shouts: Convincing people of that 2 yrs ago was hard work
Philip Linden shouts: But today I get calls from everyone in the business...
Philip Linden shouts: Now everyone suddenly gets it.
Philip Linden shouts: I guess thats the fun of being a revolutionary.
Philip Linden shouts: There are lots of little things I have seen a other games
Philip Linden shouts: Our AV customization
Philip Linden shouts: That we have done.
Philip Linden shouts: I getting widely copied.
You shout: Yes, at first that would just seem like a 3d Modeler online, but with an interface like this it's hard to imagine what ISNT fun about SL
Philip Linden shouts: For example.
Philip Linden shouts: Yes thanks!
Alek Wu shouts: we lub Philip!
You shout: So how did you first imagine this?
Philip Linden shouts: Ohh... well picture this.
You shout: When you had the idea, what did it look like to you, and how was it diffrent form what we have
Philip Linden shouts: I used to dream
Philip Linden shouts: Of like a big empty space
Philip Linden shouts: Where I would stand
Philip Linden shouts: And take big pieces of walls
Philip Linden shouts: Out of a toolkit...
Philip Linden shouts: And drag them around myself.
Philip Linden shouts: That idea,
Philip Linden shouts: Of being a creator in a new world.
Philip Linden shouts: Was what I thought a lot about.
Philip Linden shouts: How to do it...
You shout: That's incredible
Philip Linden shouts: With the parts I had... PCs, the net.
You shout: So you emphisize heavily the part about being a creator in a new wold
Philip Linden shouts: Yes.
You shout: Is this the main draw to SL for you?
Philip Linden shouts: It seemed to me that what would be interesting...
Philip Linden shouts: Was the idea
Philip Linden shouts: That you wouldn't just 'be there'
Philip Linden shouts: But would actually be a part of creating the world around you.
Philip Linden shouts: I think that the only defensively 'real' world
Philip Linden shouts: Is one which reflects our own passions, designs.
Philip Linden shouts: I don't think that just means building stuff...
Philip Linden shouts: But also building society, governance, meaning.
Philip Linden shouts: So beyond the 3dmodeling.
Philip Linden shouts: Into deeper forms of creation.
Philip Linden shouts: And I also think/hope...
Philip Linden shouts: That somehow SL can make us a bit better than we are...
Philip Linden shouts: Teach us things about ourselves.
Philip Linden shouts: That we wouldn't otherwise learn.
You shout: That's great
You shout: So it must have been a little dishearting when a group like the WW2OLers came into SL
Philip Linden shouts: No I don't really think so.
You shout: Or a person like... oh... I don't know... EZ Money popped up
Philip Linden shouts: Conflict is a part of narrative... a part of all lives.
Philip Linden shouts: When I see a place... like Tunetown for example.
You shout: So you expected something like this to happen really?
Philip Linden shouts: Where there is no conflict.
Philip Linden shouts: In a sense there is also no life.
You shout: Ah yes, the mighty flop
Philip Linden shouts: (although I think Toontown is very cool)
You shout: And do you believe (among other things) that this is why Toontown was not successful?
Philip Linden shouts: Well...
Philip Linden shouts: I don't think that makes it unsuccessful necessarily
Philip Linden shouts: Only a lot less real.
You shout: Ah I see
Philip Linden shouts: I am interested in what Jaron Lanier calls 'the reality conversation'
Philip Linden shouts: And that is what we are starting here.
You shout: So when you first started coding SL, and getting your ideas on paper, then what did you imagine SL to be?
Philip Linden shouts: Hmm....
Philip Linden shouts: Well the first thing I/we worked on
Philip Linden shouts: Was the server model...
Philip Linden shouts: The idea that the 'world' was on all these servers...
Philip Linden shouts: And that you were a sort of 'agent' within it.
Philip Linden shouts: When you connected.
Philip Linden shouts: That was the first work we did...
Philip Linden shouts: Oh and a really cool first experiment was water...
You shout: I bet
Philip Linden shouts: let me tell you about that...
You shout: Please do
Philip Linden shouts: A bit like genesis really.
Philip Linden shouts: The first thing we did was make the servers simulate real water.
You shout: So you had a "Waterworld"
Philip Linden shouts: With waves and reflection and you could throw things in it.
Philip Linden shouts: And watch the waves go across the sims.
Philip Linden shouts: Yes it was Waterworld.
Philip Linden shouts: We figured it we could xmit all that moving water.
Philip Linden shouts: We could do anything
Philip Linden shouts: And so that was the start of it.
You shout: So was the water then more complex then it is now?
Philip Linden shouts: Much!
You shout: You had to compress it basicly
Philip Linden shouts: It was a simulation, like our wind and clouds today.
You shout: I see
Philip Linden shouts: We had to compress and send it constantly.
Philip Linden shouts: But we took it out, because although it was pretty.
Philip Linden shouts: It was like 80Kbps... just for the water.
Philip Linden shouts: So not that pretty!
You shout: Yeah not technicly
You shout: So tell me about your first terrain
You shout: What was that like?

Philip Linden shouts: Hmmm...
Philip Linden shouts: Well let me remember
Philip Linden shouts: We had these cool trees...
Philip Linden shouts: just simple billboards, but they burned!
Philip Linden shouts: You could shoot them and start them on fire.
Philip Linden shouts: And the fire would spread to other trees.
Philip Linden shouts: It was amusing.
You shout: This was also more complex thea now then
You shout: than*
Philip Linden shouts: Well now they are a LOT more visually complex.
Philip Linden shouts: And of course blow in the wind.
You shout: Right
Philip Linden shouts: So there was a time...
Philip Linden shouts: Many board meetings ago.
Philip Linden shouts: When we didn't know exactly what we wanted SL to be like...
Philip Linden shouts: And on a lark...
Philip Linden shouts: I asked the guys in the office to just build crazy stuff
Philip Linden shouts: while we met in the meeting.
You shout: So THAT'S where Zoe came from
Philip Linden shouts: We were watching them on a big monitor...
Philip Linden shouts: Building little snowmen and houses and stuff.
You shout: Haha
You shout: Come a long way since that
Philip Linden shouts: And after a bit of watching them all working together in real time.
Philip Linden shouts: We realized WOW that was what was cool about SL
Philip Linden shouts: That idea of creating together.
You shout: So zooming to today
You shout: WHat do you think about the current outrages with taxes?
Philip Linden shouts: Well I loved the tea party.
Philip Linden shouts: I'm in boston so I showed those boxes to folks here.
Philip Linden shouts: Great s
You shout: Hehe
Philip Linden shouts: It was great
Philip Linden shouts: But seriously
You shout: I bet
Philip Linden shouts: Taxes and how to change them are highest priority.
stampshady grimm is offline
Philip Linden shouts: We need to change the rates, etc, as more folks come in.
Philip Linden shouts: But remember that we have to keep enough capacity to go around.
Philip Linden shouts: But having said that.
Philip Linden shouts: The rates are very high to incent lots of 'evolution' in the content
Philip Linden shouts: And as the world gets bigger we won't need as much pressure there.
Philip Linden shouts: Kind of a trade off between buying and renting, in a way.
Philip Linden shouts: Right now its like rent-world!
You shout: A great foundation for something like this
You: Just not one that grows with the population
You shout: Now backtracking for a second, the first sim to go online was Zoe, correct?
Philip Linden shouts: Man thats a good question.
Philip Linden shouts: I don't really remember.
Philip Linden shouts: The area in the central lake... minna, zoe, natoma.
Philip Linden shouts: Those were the first areas, yes.
You shout: Well how about the building system, how was that at the time?
Philip Linden shouts: Well actually its not changed much.
Philip Linden shouts: Thats probably the system that seems most right.
Philip Linden shouts: We've still got lots of work though!
You shout: Now someone in the audiance had a question
You shout: What was your question please
You shout: Ok never mind then :0
James Miller shouts: ...I have one
You: Well if I could have one last question Phil, how big did you expect the world to be?
You shout: Well if I could have one last question Phil, how big did you expect the world to be?
You shout: Did you ever imagine it as big as this?
You shout: Or bigger maybe?
Philip Linden shouts: Well...
Philip Linden shouts: Like Han Solo said.
Philip Linden shouts: I can imagine an awful lot.
Philip Linden shouts: I think SL gets more and more interesting as it grows.
Philip Linden shouts: Now we are a village.
Philip Linden shouts: Imagine us as a small city.
James Miller shouts: Phil, come visit new york before you go home from boston
Philip Linden shouts: As we put servers in other parts of the world...
Philip Linden shouts: That will be incredibly cool.
Philip Linden shouts: Imagine waking into SL China, or something.
You:
Philip Linden shouts: Walking I mean.
Philip Linden shouts: Yep will help with that.
You shout: Well that was a great interview Phil, thank you very much for being here
Philip Linden shouts: Thank you very muhc for having me!!!
Philip Linden shouts: Its late in boston...
Philip Linden shouts: And I have an early meeting.
You shout: I bet, good luck over there
Philip Linden shouts: So gotta run.
You shout: See you
Philip Linden shouts: Thank you all for making SL what it is.

That was a great interview.

The SL world, at some point in the future, will be so large, it will take you a full 24 hours to walk from one end to the other.

Seriously.

How long do you think it takes now, Dave? Oh yeah that was a nice Philip interview! Learned a lot about SL I didn't know before lol

Interesting that you should ask that....about how long? It took me about 2 1/2 hours to walk the entire distance around SL last week. There were only two places where the builds were so close to the edge that I couldn't walk along it. Very interesting walkabout!!!

Why does that NOT surprise me that you walked all the way around SL, Sulumor? ROFLMAO

Did you take your elephant for an afternoon stroll....?

yeah...and he left a trail behind him....ROFLMAO

Thanks for posting the transcript, Darwin! Makes me feel a bit better about missing the event...

Yw Nergal

Thx Darwin I wish i could have been there