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> Specifically about online VR (what people call the metaverse for some reason that eludes me) Because that is what Neal Stephenson called it in _Snow Crash_,
by Turing_Machine 5y ago
> Specifically about online VR (what people call the metaverse for some reason that eludes me)
Because that is what Neal Stephenson called it in _Snow Crash_, which, though perhaps not the very first, was at least the first widely-popularized description of such a system. I recommend reading the book and comparing it to what we actually have. What we actually have comes up pretty short.
- matthewdgreen 5y agoI'm a huge fan of Stephenson, but: William Gibson's Neuromancer (trilogy) is probably more deserving of credit for initially popularizing the idea of a virtual shared environment. Wikipedia gives credit to Vinge's 1981 "True Names", but Neuromancer alone has sold more copies than that book and all of Stephenson's novels combined, not to mention that it won the Hugo and Nebula.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoHmm... it's been a long time since I read Gibson, but wasn't his cyberworld mainly populated by hackers? What made Stephenson's Metaverse different was that it was the kind of place where (e.g.) high schoolers would go on dates. Gibson's cyberspace was dark, dark, dark.
- CRConrad 5y ago> Hmm... it's been a long time since I read Gibson, but wasn't his cyberworld mainly populated by hackers? AFAICR: Hackers, the corporations they prey on, and the employees and consultants employed by the corporations. One would think, also the clients paying the corporations for the stuff the employees/consultants produce, but I honestly can't recall; they probably featured very little in the plot, and it's been if not over then very close to thirty years since I read it.