Message #3071

From: David Vanderschel <DvdS@Austin.RR.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Snowcrash and Permutation City
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2015 10:00:09 -0600

Melinda’s comment got me curious about Second Life. I had never paid
much attention. Then I found a contradiction of Melinda’s claim from
Second Life creator Philip Rosedale himself, here:
http://freakonomics.com/2007/12/13/philip-rosedale-answers-your-second-life-questions/

Q: Have you ever read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson? I don’t know
much about Second Life but it sounds similar to the Metaverse in the
fiction novel.

A: When Snow Crash came out, I was already really intent on the idea
of creating a virtual world like Second Life — I had been thinking
about it and doing what small experiments I could since I was in
college. But Snow Crash certainly painted a compelling picture of
what such a virtual world could look like in the near future, and I
found that inspiring.

I guess I am only quibbling about the definite article. He did find it
inspiring, but he had already been inspired; so it was not _the_
inspiration.

Unlike Melinda, I did not find Stephenson’s writing to be amateurish.
However, I did take it to be deliberately absurd and satirically
comical. I liked Snow Crash a lot, laughed a lot. I still occasionally
recommend it to people.

Regards,
David V.

On 2/9/2015 7:10 PM, Melinda Green melinda@superliminal.com [4D_Cubing]
wrote:
> Snowcrash’s metaverse was the inspiration for Second Life which I
> helped develop for a couple of years.