Inside Second Life

With Rosedale working like Dr. Frankenstein, word spread through Silicon Valley of this wacky guy who was looking for people to join him at his start-up, Linden Lab. Cory Ondrejka, a game programmer, was told by a friend: "I just interviewed with a guy who may be crazy. But I'm not sure if he's crazy good or crazy bad." When Ondrejka met Rosedale, Rosedale effused about creating a living ecosystem in a computer-generated world. "Let's build this beautiful forest," Rosedale invited, like some dot com Tim Leary. It was crazy, Ondrejka decided, but in a sorta groovy way. "This was a chance to do something bigger than games," he says. They knew where they wanted to begin -- by simulating the seas. "We started with water," Rosedale says. "It was Genesis." When I first interviewed Rosedale in 2003 after Second Life's launch, he told me his goal was to "simulate reality in total."

With Rosedale at the controls, Linden Lab lured Burning Man minded geeks from around the Bay Area, who transformed his company into their own culty Mecca. Like something out of Logan's Run, they began calling the place "the Lab." In Second Life, their avatars proudly brandish the familial surname, Linden. Around the office, they don leather necklaces with pendants of the Second Life logo -- the ancient eye-in-palm talisman called The Hand of God. "All seeing, all knowing," Rosedale says. The Lindens, like generations of San Franciscans before them, fashion themselves as revolutionaries in the truest sense. "We all ride motorcycles and hang out in North Beach," one bearded Linden tells me during my visit. Another says, "We drank the Kool-Aid, brother."

On this day, the Lab buzzes with activity, as blue-haired and tattooed Lindens tap their keys in cubicles lined with rubber ducks and dog-eared copies of Neuromancer. There's the fuzzy feeling in the air, like a Dead show parking lot, but Jerry is among them. Rosedale occupies an open desk in the middle of the room, and commits himself to keeping the good vibes amped. "Let me show you what I mean," he says, spinning gingerly around to his PC. There are pictures of his kids on his desk near a DVD of Apocalypse Now, one of his favorite films to quote. With a few strokes, he punches up an in-house message board on his computer which he calls "The Love Machine." The Love Machine is basically the Linden's neo-hippie version of a perpetual Valentines. Throughout the day, Lindens post little affirmations to each other online. "Thanks for having too much integrity for one single person," reads one message to Rosedale. "It feels wonderful," he says. Rosedale uses the Love Machine to evaluate employee performance. The more love you receive, the better you do. Now he wants to move it from Linden Labs into Second Life, so that Residents can heart the Lindens too. "I would like everyone within Second Life to be able to send us love," he says, locking eyes. But reality keeps getting in the way.

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"Do you mind keeping your voice down, ma'am?" a surly cafe owner tells Catherine Fitzpatrick. It's a miserably cold New York City day in reality. Fitzpatrick is a heavyset fifty-year-old mom with glasses, frizzy gray hair and a faded jean jacket. She studied at the University of Leningrad and now works as a Russian translator and as a human rights activist. She says she's working on Second Life "the same way I work on any country that's oppressed." For her efforts, she claims, she has been stalked, and received death threats.

"At first you think, well this is very attractive and open and free and Whole Earth Catalog and hippies. What's not to like?" She barks, "Then you get in and find they're rigidly orthodox!'" She's not alone in this thinking. A branch of the Second Life subscriber base has become decidedly anti-Linden. They accuse the Lindens of silencing critics, tipping off insiders on business deals, and downplaying technical problems that could affect Second Life soon. The most dramatic charge is that the future of the Internet is at stake: Is it going to be true society, or a mall, controlled by private interests?