My wife bought me the book Snow Crash and said, 'You're going to love this' ... In fact, he loved it so much, he wanted to build a virtual world base… - Philip Rosedale

I started doing electronics when I was a little kid, in the 5th or 6th grade, buying computer parts at a swap meet and writing my first programs. Simple things just blew my mind with respect to the sort of infinite simulation or combinatorial possibility inside the computer. My personal obsession from my childhood was that I just wanted to recreate reality inside the computer and then go in there.

It's a bit like The Matrix... We provide the land, and the community builds the actual world, which gives everyone a huge sense of being pioneers in a great experiment.

I think the magic of Silicon Valley is not in fostering risk-taking, but instead in making it safe to work on risky things.