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Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

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Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#31

Post by camtarn »

n00b101 wrote: post #3

I read Snow Crash when I was 13. Then I lost countless hours trying to "live the dream" with Active Worlds [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

"In the summer of 1994, Ron Britvich created WebWorld, the first 2.5D world where tens of thousands could chat, build and travel. WebWorld operated on the Peregrine Systems Inc. servers as an after hours project until Britvich left the company to join Knowledge Adventure Worlds (KAW) in the fall of that year. In February 1995, KAW spun off their 3D Web division to form the company Worlds Inc."

It's really odd to think that NCSA Mosaic had just been released a year earlier - and if you go back to 2D, rather than 2.5D, the first persistent multiplayer virtual world launched in 1986, several years before even non-graphical web browsing was a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#32

Post by angersock »

n00b101 wrote: post #3

I read Snow Crash when I was 13. Then I lost countless hours trying to "live the dream" with Active Worlds [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

I spent many, many hours building things in Cofmeta and mars. :)

AW was ahead of its time, but internal shenanigans basically stunted and killed it.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#33

Post by stephenpiment »

throwanem wrote: post #5
Animats wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book, or the review? The book outlines a world where franchisers run everything, including jails. It's a cookie-cutter world; instances of each franchise are very standardized, and this is a plot point. The hero delivers pizza for the Mafia run pizza franchise, when he's not hacking code. The heroine is a 15-year old skateboarding courier girl with a really good skateboard. There's a big virtual world, run partly…

The review, sorry - I know the book of old. I've edited my prior comment for greater salience.

Author of the essay here.

I've found that Snow Crash is one of those books that pretty strongly divides readers. Some people are very fond of it; others bounce off of it, often commenting that something about it rubs them the wrong way. Not many readers are in the middle.

I'm definitely in the former camp, even though I can see the book's weaknesses from a writing perspective. In the essay, I wanted to express some thoughts on why the book's fans respond to it, to the point that it has been rather influential in the world beyond fiction.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#34

Post by guiambros »

n00b101 wrote: post #3

I read Snow Crash when I was 13. Then I lost countless hours trying to "live the dream" with Active Worlds [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

Likewise. I missed Lucasfilm's Habitat, but tried most of the virtual worlds after that, from MUDs via telnet in the early 90's, Worlds Chat in 95-96, Active Worlds right after (my company spent $1,500 buying a server copy), The Palace, Second Life, WoW, and more recently DK2/CC, etc.

We're getting close from the technology perspective, but the storytelling and the "massive" portion of an MMORPG is still not there. Visually impressive, but the social interactions are dull and unsophisticated, without emotional depth.

It's funny to look in hindsight. What Habitat has apparently nailed in the 80's [1] is what is missing, 30+ years later.

[1] http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#35

Post by PhasmaFelis »

guiambros wrote: post #34
n00b101 wrote: post #3

I read Snow Crash when I was 13. Then I lost countless hours trying to "live the dream" with Active Worlds [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

Likewise. I missed Lucasfilm's Habitat, but tried most of the virtual worlds after that, from MUDs via telnet in the early 90's, Worlds Chat in 95-96, Active Worlds right after (my company spent $1,500 buying a server copy), The Palace, Second Life, WoW, and more recently DK2/CC, etc. We're getting close from the technology perspective, but the storytelling and the " massive " portion of an MMORPG is still not there.…

> We're getting close from the technology perspective, but the storytelling and the "massive" portion of an MMORPG is still not there. Visually impressive, but the social interactions are dull and unsophisticated, without emotional depth.

However ambitious MMOs and virtual worlds get, I worry that they'll always run into the same barrier restricting their potential past a certain scale: the MMO experience is made out of people, and a whole lot of people are awful.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#36

Post by Vivtek »

L_226 wrote: post #19
n00b101 wrote: post #3

I read Snow Crash when I was 13. Then I lost countless hours trying to "live the dream" with Active Worlds [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

I once toyed around with the idea of making a browser based virtual world for 4chan when I still used it regularly (~2008ish). Heavily inspired by Gibson and Stephenson. Each board would be it's own green wireframe building off a main avenue with shape and size corresponding to the volume of content - and thus would change over time. You would be able to fly around the 'city' and enter buildings to view the threads.…

This has me giggling. I guess one never really grows out of being a 14-year-old, ultimately.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#37

Post by Vivtek »

milcron wrote: post #12
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't totally hate Tron 2: it gave both Emacs and a Real CLI screen time. But neither that nor Olivia Wilde makes up for weak writing, and a nonsensical paint-by-numbers excuse plot, to say nothing of choices which undermine the aestetic, in the sequel to a movie that lived on aestetic, and actually had a less paint-by-numbers plot (somehow). I don't want to hate it, but I don't feel like I was given a choice.

Tron 2 was more of an extended Daft Punk music video than an actual movie.

You say that as though it were a bug, not a feature.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#38

Post by FrozenVoid »

guiambros wrote: post #34
n00b101 wrote: post #3

I read Snow Crash when I was 13. Then I lost countless hours trying to "live the dream" with Active Worlds [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

Likewise. I missed Lucasfilm's Habitat, but tried most of the virtual worlds after that, from MUDs via telnet in the early 90's, Worlds Chat in 95-96, Active Worlds right after (my company spent $1,500 buying a server copy), The Palace, Second Life, WoW, and more recently DK2/CC, etc. We're getting close from the technology perspective, but the storytelling and the " massive " portion of an MMORPG is still not there.…

>but the storytelling and the "massive" portion of an MMORPG is still not there Thats because of hardware and network limits. MMOs are optimized to reduce latency and expensive computations. Having too many people concentrating on one place creates a huge stream of data that has to be broadcast to everyone in range. A few players in one area/instance don't need that much bandwidth(since most of world is loaded locally, only the changes are needed).

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#39

Post by vertis »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #35
guiambros wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise. I missed Lucasfilm's Habitat, but tried most of the virtual worlds after that, from MUDs via telnet in the early 90's, Worlds Chat in 95-96, Active Worlds right after (my company spent $1,500 buying a server copy), The Palace, Second Life, WoW, and more recently DK2/CC, etc. We're getting close from the technology perspective, but the storytelling and the " massive " portion of an MMORPG is still not there.…

> We're getting close from the technology perspective, but the storytelling and the "massive" portion of an MMORPG is still not there. Visually impressive, but the social interactions are dull and unsophisticated, without emotional depth. However ambitious MMOs and virtual worlds get, I worry that they'll always run into the same barrier restricting their potential past a certain scale: the MMO experience is made out…

Snow Crash actually deals with this if I remember correctly. When you go out onto the street you're likely to encounter people in the shape of Penises (etc).

Most chat and social apps deal with this already by limiting your interactions to selected people that you whitelist.

That shouldn't be hard to replicate into VR.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#40

Post by 20yrs_no_equity »

guiambros wrote: post #34
n00b101 wrote: post #3

I read Snow Crash when I was 13. Then I lost countless hours trying to "live the dream" with Active Worlds [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

Likewise. I missed Lucasfilm's Habitat, but tried most of the virtual worlds after that, from MUDs via telnet in the early 90's, Worlds Chat in 95-96, Active Worlds right after (my company spent $1,500 buying a server copy), The Palace, Second Life, WoW, and more recently DK2/CC, etc. We're getting close from the technology perspective, but the storytelling and the " massive " portion of an MMORPG is still not there.…

What are "DK2/CC"? I've not heard of them.
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