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“Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

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Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#11

Post by Pfhreak »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #6

Nearly thirty years on, any adaptation will have to lose some of the book’s charming elements that made sense at the time, such as an America dealing with the fallout of specifically the Reagan administration, or a conspicuous amount of immigrants from early post-Soviet Tajikistan. Still, the theme of everything being privatized has held up well. The one downside of bringing Snow Crash back into the public consciousn…

> such an as America dealing with the fallout of specifically the Reagan administration

I mean, Snowcrash's view of income inequality, limitless corporate power, the value of the human life vs capital... I don't think they have to tone that down at all. In fact, my money is they play that up pretty significantly as the essential Neoliberal endgame.

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#13

Post by andybak »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #6

Nearly thirty years on, any adaptation will have to lose some of the book’s charming elements that made sense at the time, such as an America dealing with the fallout of specifically the Reagan administration, or a conspicuous amount of immigrants from early post-Soviet Tajikistan. Still, the theme of everything being privatized has held up well. The one downside of bringing Snow Crash back into the public consciousn…

Westworld also had several references to Jaynes. They fitted perfectly.

Damn that series was good.

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#14

Post by jacquesm »

jscheel wrote: post #8
ascavalcante80 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same feeling... We shouldn't be surprised if, after that, we see a Neuromancer series on Netflix or Amazon Prime (not Disney, pls God!).

Don't play with my emotions that way. There's been talk of adapting Neuromancer to screen for waaaay to long.

I had the same reaction, it really is what you want to read, for me somehow 'see' became 'saw', then I did a double take and realized what I got wrong.

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#15

Post by jacquesm »

andybak wrote: post #13
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #6

Nearly thirty years on, any adaptation will have to lose some of the book’s charming elements that made sense at the time, such as an America dealing with the fallout of specifically the Reagan administration, or a conspicuous amount of immigrants from early post-Soviet Tajikistan. Still, the theme of everything being privatized has held up well. The one downside of bringing Snow Crash back into the public consciousn…

Westworld also had several references to Jaynes. They fitted perfectly. Damn that series was good.

If you liked the series you should definitely track down the original movie with Yul Brynner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld_(film)

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#16

Post by schoen »

jacquesm wrote: post #10
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #2

This book featured adversarial inputs to the human neural network long before deep learning was cool.

Epileptic seizures can be triggered, that's the only actual adversarial attack on the human neural network that I'm aware of that actually works, and is more common than you might think: https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/photosensitive-epilepsy

You could say that all perceptual illusions are adversarial inputs for the human senses. They're just not damaging ones.

In a lot of adversarial input stuff for AI, you're trying to get the AI to misclassify something, not necessarily to damage the AI or even change its learning at all. In Snow Crash the perceptions were definitely damaging to the perceivers, but I don't think you have to go nearly that far to have adversarial inputs!

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#17

Post by bduerst »

jasondclinton wrote: post #3

I'm glad to see this happen. Suspect that a network exec somewhere said: "Sci-fi! Dystopia! Rogue AI! Cyberpunk!" and then HBO went through the list of books meeting that criteria (copying the Game of Thrones formula) and picked a best-seller to make a screen play out of. The subject matter seems to fit quite well with the tech malaise we are feeling at the end of the 2010's.

Disney has Mandalorian. Amazon has The Expanse and recently picked up Ringworld for a tv-series too.

Another unnamed network is supposedly currently considering Red Rising series as well.

Sci-Fi dystopia is hot right now.

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#19

Post by gumby »

bduerst wrote: post #17
jasondclinton wrote: post #3

I'm glad to see this happen. Suspect that a network exec somewhere said: "Sci-fi! Dystopia! Rogue AI! Cyberpunk!" and then HBO went through the list of books meeting that criteria (copying the Game of Thrones formula) and picked a best-seller to make a screen play out of. The subject matter seems to fit quite well with the tech malaise we are feeling at the end of the 2010's.

Disney has Mandalorian . Amazon has The Expanse and recently picked up Ringworld for a tv-series too. Another unnamed network is supposedly currently considering Red Rising series as well. Sci-Fi dystopia is hot right now.

Is Ringworld really dystopian? I mean the ring world civilization(s) did fall, but Known Space and the puppeteers were pretty much doing OK.

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#20

Post by Pfhreak »

ggm wrote: post #12

Watch them ruin it.

The book is a lot of fun, but it's also not a sacred text. It's a story about a pizza delivery driver who will be murdered if he delivers pizza too late and is also a hacker getting bound up in a story of Sumerian brain programmers run amok. (And somehow these brain programmers also can infect someone's blood?)

For all of its foresight, the book is goofy and dated as hell. If it's going to come to screen there's no way the adaption doesn't either:

1) Update some of the goofier stuff (upsetting the fans)

or

2) Leave it all in, in all its 80s action movie glory. (Which won't look all that great in the modern zeitgeist.)

I'm already expecting people will be disappointed with whoever they cast for Hiro, for either being not Black enough (or too Black) or not Korean enough (or too Korean). Similarly, do they outfit Y.T. with a retrofuturist 80s interpretation of what it means to be a skater punk? Or do they update it to be a 2020s interpretation of what it means to be a future skater punk? There's no answers to these that satisfies everyone. Someone will inevitably say it was 'ruined' no matter what the show runner does.

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