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This is not an anomaly, by the way. I've interviewed many multiple Meta staffers (including senior leaders), and can find little evidence that leadership actual

This is not an anomaly, by the way. I've interviewed many multiple Meta staffers (including senior leaders), and can find little evidence that leadership actually read "Snow Crash" and/or even cared about virtual worlds. Even after spending tens of billions claiming they were building the Metaverse. Some background: https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2025/05/horizon-worlds-meta-horizon-problems.html https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2025/05/horizon-worlds-meta-horizo...

wmf 1y ago
Meta's recent strategy is more reminiscent of Rainbows End.
roscas 1y ago
[flagged]
- SirFatty 1y ago
  You forgot to finish up the comment with mention of someone being a boomer.
bsenftner 1y ago
They are still quoting Fountainhead and thinking they are intellectuals.
- SlowTao 1y ago
  A few years back Chris Hedges did a showshow/podcast or something and he was forced to finally read in depth a lot more Rand. I love his defeated responded of "It is amazing just how pedestrian those books are. There is nothing interesting in them.". Hedges is always worth listening to even if you won't always agree but he does make doomers look like utopian optimists.
  - mchusma 1y ago
    I think anyone who says there is nothing interesting in Rand either didn’t read it or is acting in bad faith. Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead are uniquely fascinating even if you don’t agree with her stance. Chris Hedges is a self reported socialist. So makes sense they would not like books negative on socialism. But you can be a socialist and still engage with competing thoughts. Just like a capitalist can review Marx and admit the ideas are important/interesting.
    - defrost 1y ago
      Both Rand and William McGonagall are widely regarded as are uniquely fascinating. In a layered complex world both the above statement and the statement that there's little of interest in Rand's books for socialists, for hedge fund traders, or for the majority of people with a background in political science, can be true. Stephen Fry, well known for his love of the English language and breadth of eclectic interest, when discussing the Scot said: I am too kind to you and to [McGonagall's] memory to reproduce the entire poem' (The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within [NY: Gotham, 2007], p. 153), and further: Almost everything that can go wrong with a poem has gone wrong here. One might argue that McGonagall has brilliantly memorialised a doomed and structurally flawed bridge in congruently doomed and structurally flawed verse. His poem is a disaster for a disaster: it is the Tay Bridge, crashing hopelessly to its destruction and dragging every innocent word with it. It is not buttressed by metre, rhyme, sense or reason and even as we read it we feel it collapse under the weight of its own absurdity and ineptitude. (p. 154, as above) Regardless of anyone's position on the political stance of Rand, her written works deserve little more than to be the subject of atrocious parody of her robber baron sick o' fantasy, the breathless bodice ripping drama of trains repeatedly entering and being reversed out of tunnels against a soundscape of a geared steampunk stock ticker of yore.
      - bitwize 1y ago
        I discovered William Topaz McGonagall after learning his surname was given to Harry Potter character Professor Minerva McGonagall. I was... astounded. Here, truly, was the Florence Foster Jenkins of poetry writing, destined to fame for all the wrong reasons.
lenerdenator 1y ago
There's precious little value for those types to read stuff like "Snow Crash". It's like the people saying "It's obvious these STEM people didn't take humanities courses". Well, yeah. The dream for the incoming freshman at Stanford's CS program isn't to graduate with a degree. The dream is to have some VC come onto campus, see some BS project the freshman cooked up, tell the freshman "You're literally Jesus Christ, and I want to fund your startup" and drop out with access to millions in funding and a network of people who can give more funding when the original round dries up. Humanities courses and reading humanistic conceptions of how tech could go wrong doesn't get you millions of dollars. Reckless abandon does.
- nirav72 1y ago
  Who has time to read when it's about 'Move fast and break things..." /s
- bitwize 1y ago
  Back when I was growing up, tech people read things like Snow Crash all the time. I guess I need to update my priors.
  - anthem2025 1y ago
    Tech people vs startup types.
    - adastra22 1y ago
      Those used to be the same people.
      - anthem2025 1y ago
        It morphed into the cult of the founder a long time ago.
KaiserPro 1y ago
I dunno who you were talking to, but the RL research areas I worked in had some definite Neil Stevenson fans. but then we weren't the pricks who thought you could make up for a shit lighting setup with polygon count cough any screenshot from horizon worlds cough

wmf 1y ago

Meta's recent strategy is more reminiscent of Rainbows End.

roscas 1y ago

[flagged]

SirFatty 1y ago
You forgot to finish up the comment with mention of someone being a boomer.

bsenftner 1y ago

They are still quoting Fountainhead and thinking they are intellectuals.

SlowTao 1y ago
A few years back Chris Hedges did a showshow/podcast or something and he was forced to finally read in depth a lot more Rand. I love his defeated responded of "It is amazing just how pedestrian those books are. There is nothing interesting in them.". Hedges is always worth listening to even if you won't always agree but he does make doomers look like utopian optimists.
- mchusma 1y ago
  I think anyone who says there is nothing interesting in Rand either didn’t read it or is acting in bad faith. Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead are uniquely fascinating even if you don’t agree with her stance. Chris Hedges is a self reported socialist. So makes sense they would not like books negative on socialism. But you can be a socialist and still engage with competing thoughts. Just like a capitalist can review Marx and admit the ideas are important/interesting.
  - defrost 1y ago
    Both Rand and William McGonagall are widely regarded as are uniquely fascinating. In a layered complex world both the above statement and the statement that there's little of interest in Rand's books for socialists, for hedge fund traders, or for the majority of people with a background in political science, can be true. Stephen Fry, well known for his love of the English language and breadth of eclectic interest, when discussing the Scot said: I am too kind to you and to [McGonagall's] memory to reproduce the entire poem' (The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within [NY: Gotham, 2007], p. 153), and further: Almost everything that can go wrong with a poem has gone wrong here. One might argue that McGonagall has brilliantly memorialised a doomed and structurally flawed bridge in congruently doomed and structurally flawed verse. His poem is a disaster for a disaster: it is the Tay Bridge, crashing hopelessly to its destruction and dragging every innocent word with it. It is not buttressed by metre, rhyme, sense or reason and even as we read it we feel it collapse under the weight of its own absurdity and ineptitude. (p. 154, as above) Regardless of anyone's position on the political stance of Rand, her written works deserve little more than to be the subject of atrocious parody of her robber baron sick o' fantasy, the breathless bodice ripping drama of trains repeatedly entering and being reversed out of tunnels against a soundscape of a geared steampunk stock ticker of yore.
    - bitwize 1y ago
      I discovered William Topaz McGonagall after learning his surname was given to Harry Potter character Professor Minerva McGonagall. I was... astounded. Here, truly, was the Florence Foster Jenkins of poetry writing, destined to fame for all the wrong reasons.

lenerdenator 1y ago

There's precious little value for those types to read stuff like "Snow Crash". It's like the people saying "It's obvious these STEM people didn't take humanities courses". Well, yeah. The dream for the incoming freshman at Stanford's CS program isn't to graduate with a degree. The dream is to have some VC come onto campus, see some BS project the freshman cooked up, tell the freshman "You're literally Jesus Christ, and I want to fund your startup" and drop out with access to millions in funding and a network of people who can give more funding when the original round dries up. Humanities courses and reading humanistic conceptions of how tech could go wrong doesn't get you millions of dollars. Reckless abandon does.

nirav72 1y ago
Who has time to read when it's about 'Move fast and break things..." /s
bitwize 1y ago
Back when I was growing up, tech people read things like Snow Crash all the time. I guess I need to update my priors.
- anthem2025 1y ago
  Tech people vs startup types.
  - adastra22 1y ago
    Those used to be the same people.
    - anthem2025 1y ago
      It morphed into the cult of the founder a long time ago.

KaiserPro 1y ago

I dunno who you were talking to, but the RL research areas I worked in had some definite Neil Stevenson fans. but then we weren't the pricks who thought you could make up for a shit lighting setup with polygon count cough any screenshot from horizon worlds cough