About Speaker

Born in San Diego, the son of a Navy carrier pilot whose deployments took his family all over the United States before returning to San Diego for high school and college. BS Physics, UCSD '92.

Philip fell in love with coding in middle school, and started a software company in high school which helped pay for college. Moved to San Francisco in '94, discovered the Internet, and created FreeVue, a videoconferencing app that worked over dialup with the earliest web cameras. Acquired by RealNetworks in late '95, where he led the creation of RealVideo and became CTO.

In '99, Philip left RealNetworks and founded Linden Lab to create Second Life and fulfill his dream to build an open virtual world. After 10 years running Second Life as CEO, he started several experimental new companies with two co-founders, including LoveMachine, Worklist.net, and Coffee & Power. In 2013, after experimenting with the mems gyro chips that would enable the Oculus Rift, they started High Fidelity to build a new open-source virtual world platform for VR Headsets. In 2019, with VR failing to gain wide consumer acceptance, refocused High Fidelity on spatial audio.

Presently working on a number of new projects at IRL415 lab in San Francisco, including FairShare, which aims to provide a basic income and reduce wealth inequality using a group-based digital currency.

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