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While 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 rem
by omarhaneef 7y ago
While 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.
- dharmab 7y agoThe twitter account "Modern Seinfeld" is full of ideas for episodes that could work with cell phones. https://twitter.com/seinfeldtoday https://twitter.com/seinfeldtoday
- michaelt 7y agoDon't they have cell phones, though? I mean, YT is able to call Hiro from the Buy-n-fly?
- mhink 7y agoIIRC, she was calling Hiro from a public Metaverse terminal. Later in the book, it was a huge for him when he had a big enough line of credit to afford the equivalent of a cell phone along with his motorcycle.
- michaelt 7y agoYou mean the "gargoyle" equipment? I kinda pictured that as a sort of google-glass-meets-nintendo-power-glove arrangement. Although perhaps that's too literal an interpretation of "recording everything that happens around them" and "in the metaverse all the time"
- Kroeler 7y agoIt's been awhile, but I thought VR glasses in "Snow Crash" have all the functionality of cell phones, you just need to log into a 3D metaverse to communicate with someone else.
- wizardforhire 7y agoExactly. Phones have become commercially obsolete as everyone have “upgraded”.