metaverse

30 Years of Snow Crash

voidStar

04 Mar 2023 • 2 min read

"Snow Crash" isn't my favourite Neal Stephenson book - that's the phenomenal "The Diamond Age" - but it's definitely an influential one for me.

Neal Stephenson has done an AMA on Reddit:

"To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Snow Crash, I have partnered with Wētā Workshop ＆Sothebys auction house to offer a one-of-a-kind Tashi sword from the Snow Crash universe."

Sotheby's is excited to announce Snow Crash – an offering of physical and digital items connected to the revolutionary 1992 science fiction novel of the same name.

https://www.sothebys.com/en/digital-catalogues/snow-crash

Neal talking about his involvement with some Blockchain work:

The events of late 2021 and 2022 provided me with an unlooked-for opportunity to exert some influence over how the Metaverse develops. The technical capabilities of blockchain look to me like a close match with what is needed in the way of infrastructure to create a Metaverse that is open, decentralized, and based on a web of peer-to-peer transactions as opposed to all of the money going in to a central authority. I'm fortunate to be working with a small but dedicated group of people at Lamina 1 who see it the same way and are working to implement that in the form of a new, proof of stake, energy efficient chain. We care about royalties for artists, which is more than I can say for many players in the space. We're building a chain, and an interface to that chain, that will work for the kinds of people whose input will be needed to construct a functioning Metaverse. It's not compulsory; if we deliver what we intend to deliver, people wll use it or not. Developers who prefer to see half of their revenue disappear into the coffers of large companies are free to use those systems instead.

Neal Stephenson's official site:

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