5 ms·
Reminds me of one of the more brilliant passages in Snow Crash, describing work in "Fed Land"... ''' Y.T's mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and sta
by staplung 4mo ago
Reminds me of one of the more brilliant passages in Snow Crash, describing work in "Fed Land"...
'''
Y.T's mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this memo, and her reaction, based on the time spent, will go something like this:
Less than 10 min. Time for an employee conference and possible attitude counseling.
10-14 min. Keep an eye on this employee; may be developing slipshod attitude.
14-15.61 min. Employee is an efficient worker, may sometimes miss important details.
Exactly 15.62 min. Smartass. Needs attitude counseling.
15.63-16 min. Asswipe. Not to be trusted.
16-18 min. Employee is a methodical worker, may sometimes get hung up on minor details.
More than 18 min. Check the security videotape, see just what this employee was up to (e.g., possible unauthorized restroom break).
Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary.
'''
- baliex 4mo agoTruly terrifying. I'll admit I was expecting one of the near-15.62 options to be "acceptable". How wrong I was; I should have seen that coming. As one of the below comments says, you just don't know what level of snooping is going on. If you're reading this $CEO, hi!
- lovich 4mo agoIf you can meet their goals, that just means there is more they can squeeze out of you. The incentive structure for our corporations means there is literally never enough and they will always demand more.
- reactordev 4mo agoThis. All KPI’s are meant to move the carrot just beyond reach.
- notnaut 4mo agoThis dynamic might not even been so bad if there was some honesty and graciousness behind it. Some friggin humanity. It’s not so cold to understand and systematize the natural tension between expectation and reality and effort. Once again at the end of the day the problem is more likely the profit motive above all else
- bluefirebrand 4mo agoThese dynamics exist specifically to wring the humanity out of any and all processes If we leave things up to humans they might be generous instead of ruthless, and generosity doesn't make money
- notnaut 4mo agoThese kinds of claims always throw me off… “These dynamics exist specifically to wring the humanity out of any and all processes” Who designed the processes? Reptilians? Whatever the flaws of the dynamic, I would guess there is something innately human and organic about it, not designed. Just another weird outcome of the efficiency machine of social evolution.
- sidereal1 4mo agoI've heard stories of current day federal employee performance reviews where, unofficially, no manager is permitted to give out a perfect 5 out of 5.
- _djo_ 4mo agoI've seen that same policy in regular corporations. Giving any member of a team 5/5 meant a personal phone call with HR and your skip level to justify it, while the message was sent unofficially beforehand that having that meeting would be bad for a manager's career.
- PaulHoule 4mo agoIt's the kind of list an LLM might make up.
- dredmorbius 4mo agoStephenson's tokens were expensive, which explains the skipped endings.
- xkcd-sucks 4mo agoHa, I agree most of his books evoke having been written during stimulant binges; rich and detailed world building in the beginnings transition to incoherent plot driven action at the endings
- drzaiusx11 4mo agoI enjoyed snow crash probably up until 2/3rds through, same with cryptonomicon. I truly wish he would stick a god damn landing. I don't know what happens after the halfway marks. It's like a different writer takes over and it jumps the shark. I stopped reading his books after a while when they all seem to go off the rails. Damn shame really.
- dredmorbius 4mo agoI'd argue that Anathem and Seveneves had actual conclusions. Possibly The Baroque Cycle though it's been a while since I'd re-read it. His political fiction (Interface and The Cobweb) were also fairly traditional, though he had a co-author on those.
- nixon_why69 4mo agoI love all his books, no hate. Anathem had perhaps the biggest deux ex machina in literary history, and seveneves had an entirely separate novella for an ending.
- InitialLastName 4mo ago
- jessetemp 4mo agoMakes me wonder what it’s like to identify with the villains in media. Zuck looking at the metaverse and thinking hey that’s a good idea! Or Thanos wasn’t so bad. Those rebel scum had it coming. Homelander is the good guy!
- micromacrofoot 4mo agoor you know, naming your company PALANTIR
- mystraline 4mo agoOr, Anduril. All the techbros love them some Lord of the Rings.
- ethbr1 4mo ago> All the techbros love them some Lord of the Rings. While being completely oblivious to the literary themes. But as the meme goes, tech bro philosophy is just sophomore know-it-all-shallowly-ism. Because reading deeply would require spending more time, which is a well-known anti-pattern.
- reactordev 4mo agoI don’t believe any of them have actually read it, but rather watched the WETA production on film.
- noworriesnate 4mo agoI think the movie was every bit as deep as the books. Remember how terrifying it was for Frodo to be seen by Sauron’s eye? No, they know exactly what they’re doing and they don’t care.
- reactordev 4mo agoExcept the movies leave out entire characters... In the books Frodo was a wealthy middle-aged hobbit. Not some boy hobbit. Book Aragorn was eagerly awaiting his time to be king. Movie Aragorn didn't want anything to do with it. Book, Denethor is being controlled by Sauron via the Palantir, in the movies he's a brutish, cruel, tyrant.
- semiquaver 4mo agoAlways thought it was weird for the omniscient narrator to refer to her as “YT’s mom”
- Dependance 4mo agoWeirder than having a character just named Y.T. ?
- ethbr1 4mo ago'Yours Truly' seems banal when the main character is Hiro Protagonist. Self-debasing levity is one of the many reasons Snow Crash (1992) is a great reaction to Neuromancer (1984).
- dozerly 4mo agoI think quite a few folks missed or have forgotten that Snow Crash is a satire on the cyberpunk genre AND society at the same time
- kridsdale1 4mo agoAnd those folks are trying very hard with the whole Torment Nexus thing.
- foolfoolz 4mo agonueromancer tried to be edgy and serious, snow crash is weird and fun
- ethbr1 4mo agoNeuromancer was edgy and serious... in 1984. And as Gibson later said ~00s, cyberpunk's moment is past and now it's boring. (At least according to him, but that counts for something)
- OJFord 4mo ago
- thinkingtoilet 4mo agoThis is the reality for many low wage workers today. Amazon drivers are on strict schedules and are watched at all times. This isn't fantasy, this is reality. It just hasn't gotten up the chain to effect the average HN reader yet.
- deltoidmaximus 4mo agoI was reminded of this sequence when one of my required trainings not only had a quiz but also a required minimum time limit. It wasn't enough knowing the material I needed to waste time on it as well. And then I remembered people in jobs that pay less than mine are already viciously harassed for not acting like identical automatons.
- ipsento606 4mo agoThis is sometimes because a rule somewhere is written in the form “employees must do x minutes of training per year” or similar
- JambalayaJimbo 4mo agoYep. I was timed when working at the drive through at a fast food restaurant.
- grog454 4mo ago> occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section No eye tracking in this dystopia I guess.
- GS523523 4mo agoWas going to reply the same. These authours don't spend enough time thinking their fantasies through.
- cindyllm 4mo ago[dead]
- fc417fc802 4mo agoAt the time it was published eye tracking would have come across as rather over the top (IMO) despite being a predictable outcome if you gave it some thought. Plus it would have necessitated adding and explaining cheap AI analysis, all the follow on plot impacts that would have, and would have ruined that scene as written. So I'd say that conveniently omitting it was a wise choice. Can be easily handwaved away if you assume some toothless anti-surveillance legislation outlaws employers from engaging in eye tracking while failing to ban all the other stuff. That's not even an unexpected real world development at this point.
- rrrhys 4mo agoThe book is from 1992.
- Cytobit 4mo agoLiterally the next two sentences describe eye tracking. > The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading.
- arwineap 4mo agoI took that to be referencing the occasional page ups in the document he was describing Not as a new mechanism of tracking, via eye tracking Could be wrong.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Dansvidania 4mo agoso many cyberpunk tropes are coming true...
- stuxnet79 4mo agoWhat makes this even more hilarious is that Meta's rebranding was in part inspired by the metaverse concept in Snow Crash. You can bet that Zuckerberg, along with many other tech executives, have read this exact passage while mining the book for ideas. Life imitating art?
- redsocksfan45 4mo agoTech corp execs also read the rest of Snowcrash, unfortunately, so besides the metaverse crap we also got Snowcrash's "gig economy" labor hellscape. See also, Jennifer Government, numerous works of PKD, etc.
- dmoy 4mo agoIt's the torment nexus, which literally came out of a reaction to Facebook's rebrand to Meta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torment_Nexus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torment_Nexus
- taude 4mo agoDid everyone like this Stephensen in this thread? I read Cryptonomicon and Seveneves, mostly. They slogged for me a bit. But I love what he writes about, so willing to try another one (even if he doesn't have an editor). It sounds like this could be topical 2027 read. I have a long summer ahead of me.
- eunoia 4mo agoBig fan of Snow Crash. For background I liked Cryptonomicon a lot but also found Seveneves to be a bit of a slog. I would check out The Diamond Age as well if you’re generally taking Stephenson book recommendations.
- antod 4mo agoI much preferred Diamond Age to Snow Crash. It's been a while though, so can't fully remember why - but I think Snow Crash tried to be too cute or something and kinda seemed disjointed.
- Avicebron 4mo agoI actually think Snow Crash is iconic for what it was conceptually, I don't know how I would actually stack the writing up now that I've gotten older and would probably pick something else. I can see it feeling tropey now despite being an originator of many of the tropes. It's been a decade(s)+? since I read it last though, still highly recommend.
- michaelt 4mo agoStephenson's writing is great if you like lengthy asides that add to the world and to your understanding of the characters, but add nothing to the plot. If you want to read six pages of detailed musings on how the character learned ballroom dance and their design for a special milk-dispensing spoon for eating cereal without it getting soggy, establishing the character is the kind of person who designs spoons in their mind as they eat breakfast, then Stephenson is for you. If you want the character to get to the damn ball and get told the secret coordinates so we can get moving with the plot already, Stephenson might not be for you.
- nicbou 4mo agoNeil Stephenson is weirdly prescient in some of his novels. The people getting beamed the worst kind of slop on Fall has also been on my mind a lot recently.
- swordsith 4mo agoI loved this book, especially the release of tension at the end.