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By the time I read either book I'd been on the 90s internet for years, and I couldn't recognize it at all in Neuromancer, but I could see it turning into someth

By the time I read either book I'd been on the 90s internet for years, and I couldn't recognize it at all in Neuromancer, but I could see it turning into something like Snow Crash. Neuromancer aged faster because the technology evolved very differently (like the 3D real-world-but-never-popular interface in Jurassic Park, for that matter). So the metaverse people are pitching looks more like Snow Crash's "avatars interacting in a world that's otherwise immediately recognizable" than Neuromancer's "stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of military systems" not just because Snow Crash is more prominent, but because it clicks more directly with people. The Snow Crash metaverse is infinitely more relatable to most people than the Neuromancer one. (And bonus points when it comes to being widespread, the novel is a lower-effort read. Which isn't a comment on quality... the genres are COMPLETELY different so I don't think that's really a reasonable comparison anyway.)

tialaramex 5y ago
A crucial difference is that Gibson hasn't the faintest idea about the actual technology - he wrote the early stuff on a typewriter - whereas Stephenson has a least a rudimentary understanding. For lots of readers this doesn't make any difference, but if you actually have some idea what's going on Gibson's approach interferes with the immersion more than Stephenson's. This has some impact on predictive power too. One reason people tried to build the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is that - more or less, you actually could imagine building that. My friend's daughter talks to the AI, and is learning to read stuff on a glowing screen that knows her name. She doesn't have an abusive step-father, and so fortunately her glowing screen won't need to teach her martial arts for people who are smaller and less powerful than their opponent, and about the importance of running away when there's no way to win. And hopefully her mother will remain a loving physical presence in her life. But the general thrust of the idea in the Primer makes sense, even if we aren't close to "really" building the Primer, ideas from Gibson don't make so much sense.
- jhbadger 5y ago
  To me I think it's the opposite -- the fact that Neuromancer's technology isn't just a version of what we have makes is what makes it timeless. Kind of how Star Wars tech from 1977 seems less dated than in most SF movies because it wasn't based on real tech. Snow Crash is so obviously just 1992 technology with a coat of paint -- Stephenson obviously played MUDs and that's all his virtual world is -- a MUD. And so it hasn't aged well as MUDs weren't the future.
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    I guess in some sense I agree that "MUDs weren't the future" but they are in fact all that anybody keeps building. Facebook's "Metaverse" is just a shitty MUD, likewise for various "Blockchain" projects that produce some sort of virtual land where you... sort of stand around. The art project I visited at the weekend with a friend had a VR environment which was too limited to really be much of a MUD, but it certainly wasn't anything more than a MUD. Science Fiction isn't necessarily about "a version of what we have" but it is about the What If? question and fantasy stories don't address that. Unexpected consequences are the story seed in good SF. Asimov in the 1950s notes that a good SF story predicts not the automobile but the traffic jam. That's where I think Stephenson is good and Gibson has nothing to tell me. Star Wars says Space Wizards fighting laser sword battles may not vanquish Evil and I'm like OK, cool, but so what? Diamond Age (in some sense a sequel to Snow Crash) has a bunch of interesting things to say about society, about what parenthood means, about Cultural Imperialism, and about what we/how we teach children.
    - jhbadger 5y ago
      I'd argue that Gibson had the most important social prediction in cyberpunk -- one that we kind of ignore today because it became true. In Gibson's future, the real conflicts are not between national governments but between rival tech companies. Obviously Gibson made the mistake common in the 1980s that the tech companies would be Japanese rather than from US or China, but the key prediction was insightful. Later cyberpunk authors like Stephenson also often have megacorps, but they obviously took them from Gibson.

tialaramex 5y ago

A crucial difference is that Gibson hasn't the faintest idea about the actual technology - he wrote the early stuff on a typewriter - whereas Stephenson has a least a rudimentary understanding. For lots of readers this doesn't make any difference, but if you actually have some idea what's going on Gibson's approach interferes with the immersion more than Stephenson's. This has some impact on predictive power too. One reason people tried to build the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is that - more or less, you actually could imagine building that. My friend's daughter talks to the AI, and is learning to read stuff on a glowing screen that knows her name. She doesn't have an abusive step-father, and so fortunately her glowing screen won't need to teach her martial arts for people who are smaller and less powerful than their opponent, and about the importance of running away when there's no way to win. And hopefully her mother will remain a loving physical presence in her life. But the general thrust of the idea in the Primer makes sense, even if we aren't close to "really" building the Primer, ideas from Gibson don't make so much sense.

jhbadger 5y ago
To me I think it's the opposite -- the fact that Neuromancer's technology isn't just a version of what we have makes is what makes it timeless. Kind of how Star Wars tech from 1977 seems less dated than in most SF movies because it wasn't based on real tech. Snow Crash is so obviously just 1992 technology with a coat of paint -- Stephenson obviously played MUDs and that's all his virtual world is -- a MUD. And so it hasn't aged well as MUDs weren't the future.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  I guess in some sense I agree that "MUDs weren't the future" but they are in fact all that anybody keeps building. Facebook's "Metaverse" is just a shitty MUD, likewise for various "Blockchain" projects that produce some sort of virtual land where you... sort of stand around. The art project I visited at the weekend with a friend had a VR environment which was too limited to really be much of a MUD, but it certainly wasn't anything more than a MUD. Science Fiction isn't necessarily about "a version of what we have" but it is about the What If? question and fantasy stories don't address that. Unexpected consequences are the story seed in good SF. Asimov in the 1950s notes that a good SF story predicts not the automobile but the traffic jam. That's where I think Stephenson is good and Gibson has nothing to tell me. Star Wars says Space Wizards fighting laser sword battles may not vanquish Evil and I'm like OK, cool, but so what? Diamond Age (in some sense a sequel to Snow Crash) has a bunch of interesting things to say about society, about what parenthood means, about Cultural Imperialism, and about what we/how we teach children.
  - jhbadger 5y ago
    I'd argue that Gibson had the most important social prediction in cyberpunk -- one that we kind of ignore today because it became true. In Gibson's future, the real conflicts are not between national governments but between rival tech companies. Obviously Gibson made the mistake common in the 1980s that the tech companies would be Japanese rather than from US or China, but the key prediction was insightful. Later cyberpunk authors like Stephenson also often have megacorps, but they obviously took them from Gibson.