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“Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers
- etaioinshrdlu 7y agoThis book featured adversarial inputs to the human neural network long before deep learning was cool.
- jacquesm 7y agoEpileptic seizures can be triggered, that's the only actual adversarial attack on the human neural network that I'm aware of that actually works, and is more common than you might think: https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/photosensitive-epilepsy https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/photosensitive-epilepsy
- schoen 7y agoYou could say that all perceptual illusions are adversarial inputs for the human senses. They're just not damaging ones. In a lot of adversarial input stuff for AI, you're trying to get the AI to misclassify something, not necessarily to damage the AI or even change its learning at all. In Snow Crash the perceptions were definitely damaging to the perceivers, but I don't think you have to go nearly that far to have adversarial inputs!
- jacquesm 7y agoTrue, but it was just the Snow Crash like ones that I had in mind. There are also adversarial attacks possible on all the other senses once you understand how they work at a physical or pre-processing level. You can make something cold feel hot, trigger speech patterns to go off by pre-setting them with auditory patterns, cause people to hear sounds that aren't there and so on. Given how many of these pathways are buggy it is quite impressive how well the brain can make sense of its surroundings. Mimicry in the animal kingdom is another 'adversarial input' that has potentially damaging effects on the perceivers (hunger!) but it is very much a defensive mechanism so that probably should not count either.
- wizardforhire 7y agoTrue nothing like snowcrash has yet to be created to any of our knowledges. Of course... if it was... how would we be able to respond to this thread! But this is whole other rabbit hole to go down that in light of some recents posts on the front page today doesn’t seem too fun.
- hwbehrens 7y agoI once read a piece of text whose contents was so vividly horrific that it caused me to momentarily pass out, falling out of my chair. Granted, it passed through an intermediate representation in my brain, but I would still count it as an adversarial input to my vision that caused lasting damage. The damage in Snow Crash just happened to be more severe than "short-term distress followed by periodic unsettlement".
- wizardforhire 7y agoIdk, human neural networks seem to be susceptible to all sorts of adversarial attacks. Snow-crash is the first example I know of, of the attack being condensed to a bitmap and experienced solely through the optic nerve and subsequently and substantially condensed in the time domain. Typically the sort of results of an adversarial attack against a human neural network similar to one described in snowcrash is more indicative of long term and repeated exposure to adversarial stimulus that usually starts at birth and last through sometimes as late as adulthood. Snowcrash condenses this effect and that’s whats striking and interesting. To elaborate, the sort of adversarial attack’s I’m thinking of, are: indoctrination; gaslighting; cycles of abuse (a very nasty one that can go on for generations!); just about anything in the cia psy-ops manual, oh and I shouldn’t leave off entrapment (that’s a fun one).
- aasasd 7y agoWe just don't yet know enough about the low-level workings of the brain. Apart from psychological manipulation, of course―as already noted in another comment.
- turingbike 7y agoI assume you have never explored your own literal blind spot [0] and how the brain just plasters over it with some hacky texture filling... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)
- jacquesm 7y agoWhy would you assume that?
- jasondclinton 7y agoI'm glad to see this happen. Suspect that a network exec somewhere said: "Sci-fi! Dystopia! Rogue AI! Cyberpunk!" and then HBO went through the list of books meeting that criteria (copying the Game of Thrones formula) and picked a best-seller to make a screen play out of. The subject matter seems to fit quite well with the tech malaise we are feeling at the end of the 2010's.
- ascavalcante80 7y agoI had the same feeling... We shouldn't be surprised if, after that, we see a Neuromancer series on Netflix or Amazon Prime (not Disney, pls God!).
- jscheel 7y agoDon't play with my emotions that way. There's been talk of adapting Neuromancer to screen for waaaay to long.
- jacquesm 7y agoI had the same reaction, it really is what you want to read, for me somehow 'see' became 'saw', then I did a double take and realized what I got wrong.
- User23 7y agoNeuromancer got adapted to real life instead.
- catalogia 7y agoThere's a Johnny Mnemonic movie, but unfortunately it's not very good.
- Zelphyr 7y agoWhile were confessing our wishlists for books-to-tv: I'd love to see "Rendezvous With Rama" made into a series.
- martythemaniak 7y agoWow, so exciting. This has got to be one of my favourite books of all time. The first time I read around the year 2000, I enjoyed but I essentially thought "That was neat, and funny, but man did he miss how things would turn out! haha". If you read it today, you might be shocked by how many things it has gotten right.
- cydonian_monk 7y agoI had the same reaction. I first read "Snow Crash" and "Brave New World" around the same time (circa-2000), and was happy that both missed the mark. Looking back at them now I feel like the modern world has become a blend of the worst parts of both.
- 3pt14159 7y agoI'm so excited for this. Snowcrash is one of the best pieces of Science Fiction I've read. It's up there with Permutation City and Stories of Your Life and Others.
- ascavalcante80 7y agoI haven't finished it... I started to listen Whool, but yeah it's a really great book. Geek, nerd piece of art.
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoNearly thirty years on, any adaptation will have to lose some of the book’s charming elements that made sense at the time, such as an America dealing with the fallout of specifically the Reagan administration, or a conspicuous amount of immigrants from early post-Soviet Tajikistan. Still, the theme of everything being privatized has held up well. The one downside of bringing Snow Crash back into the public consciousness, though, is that uninformed viewers may well take Stephenson’s use of Sumerian as the "original human language" seriously, and Julian Jaynes’ work will be probably be accepted as a valid thing when in fact it is extremely controversial.
- Pfhreak 7y ago> such an as America dealing with the fallout of specifically the Reagan administration I mean, Snowcrash's view of income inequality, limitless corporate power, the value of the human life vs capital... I don't think they have to tone that down at all. In fact, my money is they play that up pretty significantly as the essential Neoliberal endgame.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoDitto, I think that'll sell well in a world where millennial are killing $THINGS
- andybak 7y agoWestworld also had several references to Jaynes. They fitted perfectly. Damn that series was good.
- ggm 7y agoWatch them ruin it.
- Pfhreak 7y agoThe book is a lot of fun, but it's also not a sacred text. It's a story about a pizza delivery driver who will be murdered if he delivers pizza too late and is also a hacker getting bound up in a story of Sumerian brain programmers run amok. (And somehow these brain programmers also can infect someone's blood?) For all of its foresight, the book is goofy and dated as hell. If it's going to come to screen there's no way the adaption doesn't either: 1) Update some of the goofier stuff (upsetting the fans) or 2) Leave it all in, in all its 80s action movie glory. (Which won't look all that great in the modern zeitgeist.) I'm already expecting people will be disappointed with whoever they cast for Hiro, for either being not Black enough (or too Black) or not Korean enough (or too Korean). Similarly, do they outfit Y.T. with a retrofuturist 80s interpretation of what it means to be a skater punk? Or do they update it to be a 2020s interpretation of what it means to be a future skater punk? There's no answers to these that satisfies everyone. Someone will inevitably say it was 'ruined' no matter what the show runner does.
- mbrubeck 7y agoI'm curious if they'll remember that Hiro Protagonist is multiracial (Black and Asian) and that this plays a role in the plot.
- munk-a 7y agoAs played by Scarlett Johansson[1]? 1. Please do recall the casting in the live action GitS movie.
- aidenn0 7y agoI wonder how well this will work. While the book exists on several levels, it worked really well in the 90s as the logical, but absurd, conclusion to cyberpunk. The cyberpunk aesthetic feels very dated today though.
- joejerryronnie 7y agoUh oh, don't tell CD Projekt Red
- aidenn0 7y agoThe Witcher series was very much not my type of game (I didn't like the Elder Scrolls series either), so I'm unlikely to try Cyberpunk 2077. I think it has a good chance for success though because while cyberpunk is not necessarily big right now, it is a subgenre of dystopian SF, which seems to be on the upswing. However, while HBO's Watchmen is well timed because of the huge popularity of the MCU, there's not currently any similarly well-known cyberpunk body of fiction right now. It will be interesting to see how they adapt it though. It's probably one of the more "ready for screen" books that Stephenson has written, but even there it relies heavily on internal-monologue and brute writing style more than it does on great plotting. Of course if you are going by my theory of dystopian SF being the thing right now, The Diamond Age is probably a better fit, plus it's already populated with a few orgy scenes, which seems to be a plus for HBO. I suppose there are casting issues with the plot centering so much around a young girl though.
- Keverw 7y agoInteresting, didn't know HBO was going to be doing online only shows now like Netflix, Apple and Amazon. Snowcrash is the book that inspired Philip to create Second Life. Then he moved on to create High Fidelity, but they are now pivoting more for virtual meetings and business use it looks. One thing I kinda don't like about the new virtual worlds, they are disconnected spaces while Second Life tried to have a sense of continued space, but never seemed to get as popular as Facebook and a region can't hold more than 100 avatars at once but even 50 is a limit in some places. I feel SL was early for it's time though, they started working on it in the late 90s and opened in 2003. High Fidelity seemed more focus on HMDs then keyboard and mouse but I feel that is still a bit early too but it's an interesting space. I have some ideas on my own too I've been thinking about exploring, but still a lot to learn and then getting funding at some point when a more solid plan.
- akira2501 7y ago> but they are now pivoting more for virtual meetings and business use it looks. I feel like they tried that before and a room full of literal flying penises ended that experiment just as quickly as it started.
- Keverw 7y agoYeah griefers. Particle spam it sounds. Wasn't someone being interviewed for a media report who made a bunch on virtual real estate? Back in the early days too. SL got a bunch of media buzz back in 2006 and 2007. CSI did a tie in too. I think the HiFi idea might be private spaces though, so probably need to be invited. Kinda like how Google Apps let businesses have their own private version of Gmail and Docs. I guess that's one of the problems of creating a platform... Got to balance being too open or being too closed... One of the coolest things I thought about SL is you can just start building in world and scripting. However now with Mesh you create stuff externally and upload it, but don't think there's a way to really preview it much so stuck to pay to upload it, unless you logged into the beta grid. But not sure how much stuff can be stopped other than responding to abuse reports. I think screening all content like Apple does might be a solution too, but still has it's own pro and cons. I guess give people tools, and they'll abuse it. I was thinking maybe charge like half of what a high quality game on a console is to create an account, but then I doubt it would grow as much but it would limit people from creating troll accounts and help fund developments and servers.
- ryanSrich 7y agoI support any network taking on more Sci Fi. I'd give almost anything to see a proper Foundation series done by HBO. Or culture series, or a Dune series, or you name it. Imagine a gritty interpretation of Fire Upon The Deep done by Christopher Nolan. There's not nearly enough Sci Fi movies.
- ethbro 7y agoYou just described my dream reality. Please give me the metaverse coordinates of your Earth, now!
- dave84 7y agoApple are making Foundation for AppleTV+.
- aasasd 7y agoI went through about half of ‘Foundation’ in my sci-fi binge, and discovered that it's all politics instead of robotics. Might not quite fit the wave―even though it could still be a different good show, of course.
- philipkglass 7y agoAmazon is adapting Consider Phlebas, the first book in the Culture series: https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/consider-phlebas-iain-m-banks-amazon-novel-dennis-kelly-1202706327/ https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/consider-phlebas-iain-m-ban...
- omarhaneef 7y agoWhile Snow Crash is one of the all time great sci fi novels, it famously has a huge plot hole: although Stephenson saw a lot of things about the future with remarkable accuracy, he did not foresee the ubiquity of the cell phone. A simple cell phone would have undercut the main plot. Now that we know what we know, how will they account for it?
- Analemma_ 7y agoL. Bob Rife is a telecom mogul; presumably there will be some handwave about how he's manipulating the phone network to keep anyone from interfering with his plans.
- msla 7y agoI wonder if L. Bob Rife will be manipulated more to avoid offending the Scientologists in Hollywood, the corporate synergy with the Rupert Murdoch/Ted Turner types, or the Holy Roller/Southern Baptist/Evangelical Republican bloc.
- claudeganon 7y agoIIRC, Hiro lives in a self-storage facility in a semi-collapsed America, so you could probably just say that he can’t afford the Metaverse equivalent of a data plan.
- omarhaneef 7y agoI bet some variant of this will be their solution.
- wizardforhire 7y agoSpoiler alert: “Insert integer”g
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoSeinfeld is still funny even though cell phones would resolve most episodes in 5 minutes. Just make it an alternate future where some tech hasn't materialized because of corporate interests.
- chocolatebunny 7y agoSo far Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex is still my favourite cyberpunk TV series. I really want something to dethrone it. If HBO gives Snowcrash the Westworld treatment then I am hopeful but I'm still uncertain.
- madrox 7y agoMy fear with any Snowcrash adaptation is that it will feel like John Carter of Mars (or Warhammer Online [1]). John Carter was a groundbreaking novel, but its ideas became so adapted and universally understood that revisiting them in a movie felt ironically like derivative work. If I have to endure years of my non-cyberpunk friends talking about how Snowcrash feels like a rip-off of Ready Player One, then I will flip tables. [1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10/i-hope-you-like-text https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10/i-hope-you-lik...
- ljm 7y agoBut of course it's HBO so it'll have plenty of softcore porn embedded within the plot. Despite the jokes, HBO tend to do a decent job of this stuff. Ignoring the shitshow that was GoT after season 4. The Wire, The Sopranos, Westworld... probably better in their hands than, say, Netflix.
- utopian3 7y agoI wish they’d spend more time on sub-plots, character development, etc. If HBO removes all the sex scenes, they could probably squeeze in an extra episode of actual content per season (I’m being slightly sarcastic).
- ljm 7y agoThey should really branch out into proper porn spinoffs considering how masterfully they mix story and titillation. The production value would be immense. Game of Boners - Aiden Gillen returns to his brothel to make use of his Littlefinger namesake. The Sopranals: Gandolfini enters Bada Bing! through the back door etc. etc. Which is to say, HBO actually seem to be quite tasteful with this while also being gratuitous.
- Balgair 7y agoI think it has enough stuff in it that it'll be just fine. The Raft is still new 'territory' for most sci-fi, the closest we ever got was Waterworld with Kevin Costner. Reason remains sufficiently insane as a weapon to this day (like Project Pluto). Raven is, however, a bit 'old' now and I think may need an upgrade. Smartwheels are still out of reach and car surfing still is cool as hell. RatThings are just on this side of lovable in a Cthulhu-esque sort of way, so I think it'll be good merchandizing (which, reading that back, really drives home the dystopic feel of 2020) The metaverse is, yes, very old now. I'll be interested to see how they deal with it. Uncle Enzo and L. Bob Rife scream out for parallels to Bezos and Gates. So, not really 'new' but still fertile ground. All that said, the first chapter is literary genius and it would be extremely difficult mess up. All the build up to find that Hiro is a ... pizzaguy. So good.
- erik_landerholm 7y agoI hope it doesn't suck. It seems like every few years a network tries to make a sci-fi series, it bombs and then it's years before anyone tries again. I would love to see Revelation Space (by Alastair Reynolds) get the budget of the mandalorian or huge big screen budget, but alas, that will never happen.
- Dowwie 7y agoScience fiction is my favorite genre and have enjoyed a lot of Stephenson. I think that Snow Crash could be great as an HBO production and when it does well we can see Cryptonomicon, the Diamond Age, and others follow. I can't wait to see the Raven character..
- MoronInAHurry 7y agoBlogspam of https://www.engadget.com/2019/12/14/snow-crash-tv-series-hbo-max/ https://www.engadget.com/2019/12/14/snow-crash-tv-series-hbo... which is itself blogspam of https://deadline.com/2019/12/snow-crash-sci-fi-drama-series-hbo-max-michael-bacall-joe-cornish-paramount-tv-1202809103/ https://deadline.com/2019/12/snow-crash-sci-fi-drama-series-...
- InTheArena 7y agoMy hope is just that a a Baroque cycle series makes it to the screen.
- nieve 7y agoAnyone adapting Snowcrash needs to have a sense of the absurd and OTT along with the ability to play it completely deadpan. Angela Robinson brought us D.E.B.S., so I have some hope.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoYeah I imagine something along the lines of Transmetropolitan, but without obviously alien stuff. But like, odd, goofy, punk rock, etc.