Neal Stephenson reacts to Facebook name change

If Mark Zuckerberg trademarks &quot;Metaverse&quot;, William Gibson should trademark &quot;Mark Zuckerberg&quot;.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;virtual-reality-and-the-pioneers-of-cyberspace&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;virtual-reality-and-the-pionee...</a><p>&gt;Virtual Reality and the Pioneers of Cyberspace: 25 years before Oculus, John Perry Barlow described what it was like “being in nothingness.”<p>&gt;[...] And they were ready to make a product. They’d made a promo video starring Timothy Leary. Gullichsen had even registered William Gibson’s term “cyberspace” as an Autodesk trademark, prompting an irritated Gibson to apply for trademark registration of the term “Eric Gullichsen.” By June, they had an implementation which, though clearly the Kitty Hawk version of the technology, endowed people with an instantaneous vision of the Concorde level. [...]<p>moviesCyberspace: The New Explorers: Autodesk Demo Tape on Cyberspace with Timothy Leary.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5FC4UQDm_mQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5FC4UQDm_mQ</a>

What an odd interview. I got the sense that the interviewer was really looking for Stephenson to lash out with some juicy rant about how awful Facebook is, but he is so mild about the whole thing.

Can anybody recommend authors like Stephenson? He is my favourite author by far and it&#x27;s going to be a sad day when I exhaust his works.

He hinted at the revenue model being a big difference between whatever Facebook is building and the plot of his novel &quot;Snow Crash&quot;<p>Can someone fill in the specifics? I guess the trouble is that for Facebook, you&#x27;re the product, and advertisers are the clients - but, what is the revenue model of the metaverse from Snow Crash?

Snow crash and Neuromancer are two well known must reads. I remember once hearing someone compare the 2 authors styles in that Neal Stephenson sounds like a hacker trying to be a great writer, and William Gibson sounds like a great writer trying to write like a hacker.

(We asked <i>X</i> some questions about <i>Y</i>) ≠ (<i>X</i> reacts to <i>Y</i>)<p>I&#x27;d have expected Axios to be a bit more bland about it.

Maybe it&#x27;s just me, but Facebook seems to have more in common with the Snow Crash virus than with the Metaverse.

I don&#x27;t get why the interviewer suggests that the author deserves some compensation. Did metaverse as an idea did not exist before Snow Crash?

Snowcrash was forgettable. Vernor Vinges Rainbows End and stutf in Orson Scott Cards books left a much bigger mark. Esp the way the chimp troupe gets manipulated by the network. We see Vinges &quot;belief circles&quot; all around us.

Snow Crash is really a gread book, a lot of philosophy intertwined with technology and religion in one compact package.

Well, he didn&#x27;t do a William Sherman:<p>&quot;If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.&quot;

I actually want to see Zuckerberg’s Metaverse, but I also kind of want to see Neal Stephenson come at him with a team of fancy lawyers and walk away with a large pile of money.

We&#x27;ve decided we&#x27;re going to call them MetaFace. :)

Obligatory Stephenson vs Gibson battle.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slashdot.org&#x2F;story&#x2F;04&#x2F;10&#x2F;20&#x2F;1518217&#x2F;neal-stephenson-responds-with-wit-and-humor" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slashdot.org&#x2F;story&#x2F;04&#x2F;10&#x2F;20&#x2F;1518217&#x2F;neal-stephenson-...</a>

He should auction an NFT and Zuck&#x2F;FB&#x2F;MVRS should buy it for a decent amount

You think misinformation in the News Feed is bad enough? Wait till they figure out neurolinguistic hacking in the Metaverse.