{"id":616655,"date":"2023-03-11T08:49:22","date_gmt":"2023-03-11T14:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/11\/snow-crash-author-neal-stephenson-predicted-the-metaverse-what-does-he-see-next\/"},"modified":"2023-03-11T08:49:22","modified_gmt":"2023-03-11T14:49:22","slug":"snow-crash-author-neal-stephenson-predicted-the-metaverse-what-does-he-see-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/11\/snow-crash-author-neal-stephenson-predicted-the-metaverse-what-does-he-see-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson predicted the metaverse. What does he see next?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Every science fiction author tries to imagine the future. But very few get what Neal Stephenson is experiencing: Some of the world\u2019s most powerful companies are actively trying to create the future he sketched out three decades ago.<\/p>\n

That would be in Snow Crash<\/em>, the 1992 dystopia\/parody he wrote about people who escape the physical world by strapping on goggles and disappearing in the metaverse. Which is now the vision of the world Mark Zuckerberg is actively embracing, both by burning billions on the effort and renaming his company Meta. Apple is also chasing after this idea, and may finally unveil a new headset to make it happen this spring<\/a>. Microsoft has made a stab at this too \u2014 as has Stephenson himself, when he went to work for the hyped-but-fizzled Magic Leap augmented reality startup.<\/p>\n

Even if the real-world metaverse doesn\u2019t pan out, Stephenson has had an enormous influence on how we think about tech today. People who\u2019ve never written a line of code love his books \u2014 and so do bona fide nerds, like the Google Earth developers who used Snow Crash<\/em> as inspiration, or Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who hired Stephenson to work on his Blue Origin rocket startup<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I talked to Stephenson about Snow Crash<\/em>\u2019s legacy \u2014 some of which got auctioned off this week at a Sotheby\u2019s auction<\/a> \u2014 and much more for the Recode Media<\/em> podcast<\/a>. We discussed whether the metaverse can exist even if high-end virtual reality goggles never catch on; why he\u2019s never been able to turn his work into a movie, TV show, or game; and his fear of a looming ecological disaster and the science he thinks could solve it. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an edited excerpt from our chat:<\/p>\n

\u201cHoly shit. You know, maybe people are actually taking this seriously.\u201d<\/h3>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

When did you get a sense that the Jeff Bezoses and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world were really influenced by Snow Crash<\/em>? That this was really meaningful to tech people who were building things?<\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

I started hearing about it in the mid-90s, as the Internet became a thing. I was on the WELL<\/a>, which is an early BBS<\/a>, and there were a lot of tech people there. And so I started getting the idea that it was well-received. I started to hear from people in the tech industry who were reading it, and it gradually became clear. When Google Earth<\/a> came out [in 2001], word reached me through the grapevine that the Earth application described in Snow Crash<\/em> had been somewhat inspirational<\/a> for that. So at that point I was like: \u201cOkay, holy shit. You know, maybe people are actually taking this seriously. \u201c<\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

And then cut to [2021] where Zuckerberg renames his company Meta<\/a> and says, I want to build the metaverse and spend billions of dollars. Did he reach out to you prior to that? <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/h4>\n

No. And not after either. So there\u2019s been zero communication. <\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

Your book, like a lot of science fiction, is describing a dystopia. And it struck a lot of people, including me, as weird that a consumer company, one of the biggest companies in the world with 2 billion users, would say, \u201cThis is the future we\u2019re pivoting toward.\u201d What do you make of that? <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/h4>\n

So, a couple of things. One is, Snow Crash<\/em> is a dystopian novel, but it\u2019s also kind of a parody of dystopian novels because even then …<\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/h4>\n

The main character\u2019s name is \u201cHiro Protagonist<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

Yeah. And, you know, there had been enough of that kind of literature out there that the tropes had become familiar. And just rehashing them without any self-awareness or humor would have been a little weird. So there\u2019s that. And then the world \u2014 the real world \u2014 certainly has got its dystopian aspects in that book. But the metaverse itself, I think, is kind of neutral. The first parts of it that we see are kind of garish. And people are playing violent games and there\u2019s lots of ads and tacky crud there. It\u2019s the first thing that meets the eye when you go into the metaverse. But it\u2019s also made clear that there are people like Hiro and Ng<\/a> who have put a huge amount of effort into making extraordinarily beautiful, detailed houses that they can live in in the metaverse. <\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/h4>\n

To me, the striking thing is not so much the metaverse is dystopian but that it\u2019s built to escape a world that is dystopian. We\u2019ve seen that in a bunch of novels. And it just seems like a weird thing to say, \u201cThis is the future, we think this is great,\u201d because it implies that the rest of the world is going to fall apart. <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

Yeah, you\u2019d have to ask him.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy theory is that a witch placed a curse on me\u201d<\/h3>\n

Peter Kafka <\/h4>\n

You previously said you\u2019re \u201cinterested in game engines as cultural media for new creative work.\u201d So should I assume that there will be a Neal Stephenson game that I\u2019m going to play at some point?<\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/h4>\n

I\u2019m trying to build something like that. There\u2019s a lot of hoops to jump through first involving rights and financing that are very boring to talk about. <\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

Not for me. I nerd out on that stuff. <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

That\u2019s your deal? Well, it\u2019s part of what we\u2019re calling \u201cthe extended Snow Crash universe timeline,\u201d which is sequel\/prequel material, basically, to Snow Crash<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

It sounds like you may not have the rights to make your own book into something.<\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/h4>\n

The rights to the original book are currently controlled by Paramount. <\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

Why hasn\u2019t any of your work been turned into a movie, television show, or game? Especially over the last few years when there was so much money being thrown at stuff people could put on streamers. Your work means a lot to a lot of people. It\u2019s established IP. Why hasn\u2019t there been a Neal Stephenson work that I\u2019ve been able to play or watch? <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/h4>\n

My theory is that a witch placed a curse on me. That\u2019s the current going theory. My producing partner and I refer to what you\u2019ve just described as \u201cthe curse.\u201d We\u2019ve been working on trying to break the curse. Currently the leading contender is that there\u2019s some work underway to adapt a book I co-wrote called The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.<\/em><\/a> into a television series. It\u2019s still in the early stages, so it\u2019s got a lot of hoops to jump through. <\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

But you\u2019ve worked for Jeff Bezos. None of the richest people in the world ever said, \u201cI\u2019m just going to set this up for you. I\u2019m such a mega fan, I\u2019m just going to open up my pocketbook and we\u2019re going to make this thing happen\u201d?<\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

That sounds like a great plan. I like that plan. When you try to implement that plan, sometimes some complications can arise, which again, I can\u2019t get into right now. But, you want smart money. You want people who actually know how to put all the pieces together and produce something. And it is a complicated industry.<\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/h4>\n

I was wondering if you were going to say, \u201cLook, up until recently, it\u2019s been impossible technically to make the stuff that I\u2019ve written into something visual or a game, and I didn\u2019t want to do a half-assed version.\u201d I would hate to have seen what a 1997 version of the metaverse looked like. <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/h4>\n

I\u2019ve had that thought a lot of times. There but for the grace of God. <\/p>\n

If someone had done an adaptation of Snow Crash<\/em> in 1995, they would have said, \u201cWhat\u2019s the coolest snazzy computer graphics we can get right now and we\u2019ll have that be the metaverse.\u201d And then five years later, people would be looking at it like, \u201cOh my God, they used to think that was cool-looking.\u201d And I\u2019ve had a few conversations over the decades with people who were investigating adapting Snow Crash<\/em> and their ideas have changed over time. And at a certain point it flipped over and it became, you know, \u201cWe\u2019ll just shoot everything on film because the metaverse would be film-quality graphics for sure. And then we\u2019ll manipulate it, we\u2019ll add digital tweaks, to make it clear that this is the metaverse and not the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

How much does it bother you that this has not happened? <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson<\/h4>\n

You know, be careful what you wish for, I guess. It\u2019s sometimes better to have the aspiration of something than to face some of the compromises that may happen when it really materializes. But I don\u2019t lose sleep over it because I can still write novels. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s much more frustrating if you\u2019re a film director or a screenwriter and you can\u2019t get stuff made. You need other people to mobilize huge amounts of capital to make that real. There\u2019s a weird way in which novelists \u2014 even broke novelists \u2014 have got a kind of status in that world that is very high status because they have creative control. <\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/h4>\n

You make the thing exactly the way you want it to be. <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

Yeah. I can remember, way back in the \u201980s, I was talking to screenwriters who had been hired to adapt some of my work. They\u2019re driving Porsches around Beverly Hills. I\u2019m starving. But they would come to me and say, \u201cHow did you become a writer? How could I become a novelist?\u201d Because in their mind, status isn\u2019t money, it\u2019s creative control. And they wanted that kind of status. <\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

You can\u2019t pay your rent with status. <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/h4>\n

Yeah. Well, that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe metaverse initially is going to be experienced by almost everyone on a flat screen\u201d<\/h3>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

Do you think in the future \u2014 assuming the tech gets there and assuming there\u2019s a reason to use it, which are both huge things \u2014 that humans are going to want to wear AR\/VR goggles? I went to the new Avatar<\/em> a couple months ago and it\u2019s a three-hour movie and I was seeing it in IMAX with the [3-D] headset on. And an hour and a half in, I was like, \u201cI don\u2019t want to wear these goggles anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

You hit your limit. There\u2019s a semantic distinction between glasses and goggles. Lots of people wear glasses all day and nobody thinks twice about it. Very few people wear goggles all day. You go skiing, maybe you\u2019ll put on goggles. Fighter pilots wear goggles, but goggles are not generally a long-term wear kind of item. And no matter how good the experience is, wearing that stuff for, as you say, more than 45 minutes or an hour is not enjoyable for a lot of people. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, the game industry has taught everyone to experience 3D worlds through a rectangle \u2014 a flat rectangular screen \u2014 and it works great. You\u2019re using your keyboard and your mouse or whatever your control system is. And people just fluently pick that up and they\u2019ll play that for hours. So I think that goggles are going to be a thing. I like goggles. I know people who make goggles of various types, and I can\u2019t wait to see what comes out of that industry. But I think that most people are going to continue experiencing 3D worlds most of the time through screens. <\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

And does the metaverse work if it\u2019s a flat-screen experience for those people? <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/h4>\n

Totally. I keep forgetting to mention this but in my view, the metaverse initially is going to be experienced by almost everyone on a flat screen.<\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

A television set or iPhone.<\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/strong> <\/h4>\n

Yeah, some version of that. Because that\u2019s just that\u2019s the reality. That\u2019s what the market is.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only things worth talking about right now are carbon and the fracturing of society by social media\u201d<\/h3>\n

Peter Kafka <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

You imagine the future for a living. Are you optimistic or pessimistic? <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

So I think that the only two things worth talking about right now are carbon and the fracturing of society by social media. They\u2019re both equally concerning. I don\u2019t know what to do about social media. I\u2019m not a people person, in a lot of ways. So I tend to think about carbon. I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about carbon, carbon sequestration<\/a> in particular, geoengineering<\/a>, all that stuff. <\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/h4>\n

Getting the carbon emissions out of there.<\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

How do we reduce carbon emissions and remove the hundreds of billions of kilograms of carbon that we\u2019ve already put into the air? I think we\u2019ll beat that problem. But I think it\u2019s going to be the biggest engineering project in human history. It\u2019s going to transform the world \u2014 the built environment \u2014 because we simply can\u2019t do it without doing engineering on a massive scale. I think we\u2019ll succeed at it. But we\u2019ll have some bad times between now and then.<\/p>\n

I think we\u2019ll start to see the kinds of mass casualty events that are described in Kim Stanley Robinson\u2019s book, The Ministry for the Future<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> where you might see millions of people dying of heat stroke in a certain area over a very short period of time. When the temperature goes up, the humidity goes up, the power goes out. And when that kind of stuff starts happening \u2014 which I sadly think it will in the next decade \u2014 it\u2019s going to have incredibly powerful political ramifications. <\/p>\n

Peter Kafka <\/h4>\n

I was going to say we\u2019re ending this [conversation] with cautious optimism, but I don\u2019t know if I can call it that. <\/p>\n

Neal Stephenson <\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n

I hope that stuff doesn\u2019t happen, but I think even the threat of it is going to lead, eventually, to people taking action.<\/p>\n

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Host <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/authors\/peter-kafka\" rel=\"noopener\"><Strong>Peter Kafka<\/Strong><\/a>, one of the media industry’s most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians and podcasters to get their take. <i>Recode Media<\/i> is produced by Recode and the Vox Media Podcast Network.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.vox.com\/podcasts\"> <Strong>You can listen to it, and more Vox podcasts, here.<\/Strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>rnrn<\/p>\n<p><Strong>Subscribe: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/recode-media\/id1080467174\" rel=\"noopener\">Apple Podcasts<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/feed\/aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLmZlZWRidXJuZXIuY29tL1JlY29kZS1NZWRpYQ==\"_blank\">Google Podcasts<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/0yW8lq5dBrXHEeiNPFqMeh?si=5Ea8HqYSSxG0M0CFbQL7Kg\"_blank\">Spotify<\/a> | <a style=\"background-color: #ffffff\" 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metaverse”,”type”:”SiteGroup”,”url”:”https:\/\/www.vox.com\/virtual-reality-metaverse”,”slug”:”virtual-reality-metaverse”,”community_logo”:”rn<svg width=\"386px\" height=\"385px\" viewBox=\"0 0 386 385\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\" >rn rn <title>vox-mark<\/title>rn rn <defs><\/defs>rn <g id=\"Page-1\" stroke=\"none\" stroke-width=\"1\" fill=\"none\" fill-rule=\"evenodd\" >rn <path d=\"M239.811,0 L238.424,6 L259.374,6 C278.011,6 292.908,17.38 292.908,43.002 C292.908,56.967 287.784,75.469 276.598,96.888 L182.689,305.687 L159.283,35.693 C159.283,13.809 168.134,6 191.88,6 L205.854,6 L207.247,0 L1.409,0 L0,6 L13.049,6 C28.88,6 35.863,15.885 37.264,34.514 L73.611,385 L160.221,385 L304.525,79.217 C328.749,31.719 349.237,6 372.525,6 L384.162,6 L385.557,0 L239.811,0\" id=\"vox-mark\" fill=\"#444745\" ><\/path>rn 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You can also contribute via<br \/>\n <\/span>\n <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/donate\/?hosted_button_id=VSP4PYJX98SHL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><br \/>\n <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/22734206\/paypal_logo.png\"><br \/>\n <\/a>\n <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/technology\/2023\/3\/6\/23627351\/neal-stephenson-snow-crash-metaverse-goggles-movies-games-tv-podcast-peter-kafka-media-column\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><br \/>\n Rebecka Fetzer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every science fiction author tries to imagine the future. But very few get what Neal Stephenson is experiencing: Some of the world\u2019s most powerful companies are actively trying to create the future he sketched out three decades ago. That would be in Snow Crash, the 1992 dystopia\/parody he wrote about people who escape the physical<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":616656,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1944,2199,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-616655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-author","8":"category-crash","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}