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Comment by jdlshore | Hacker News Reader

For people missing the irony here, the term “metaverse,” that Meta is named after, was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book “Snow Crash.”

In the book, the metaverse is a VR version of the internet with an emphasis on accurate sword fights and realistic facial expressions.

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If Mark Zuckerberg didn't exist, we'd still have Facebook. Someone else would have done it.

But if Neal Stephenson didn't exist, we'd not necessarily have what he created. That's how unique his ideas are.

And Meta, billions of dollars later, is still no Metaverse...

Eh, I like some of Neal's books a lot, particularly Diamond Age is likely in any top ten I'd come up with. But this claim is basically only true in the trivial sense that wouldn't have any arbitrary creative work if its author hadn't created it.

So in that sense it's the exact same as Facebook. Without Neal somebody else would invented "post Cyberpunk" and without Mark somebody else would have invented whatever Facebook is - social media for your grandparents maybe?

Neal is "unique" but we're all unique, it's the least unique thing about us. He struggles to write satisfying endings, he leans too heavily on the rape-as-character-development trope, his novels have become flabby as his fame grew and presumably he was able to resist editorial demands more, he doesn't know as much about technology as he thinks he does... Like I said, "Diamond Age" would probably make my top ten, but that's not because it's flawless by any means.

> If Mark Zuckerberg didn't exist, we'd still have Facebook.

Yes, because multi-trillion dollar companies are completely natural and spawn almost at random to whatever nerd happens to be working on a particular problem at any given time

Note that GP didn’t say Meta, the trillion-dollar company, they said Facebook, the social platform that won its generation of social platforms. One of those platforms was bound to win, just by the interconnected nature of social networks, and I think reasonable people can disagree on whether that success sets you up inevitably to make a trillion dollars or not.

Web 2.0 -> inevitable social interaction platforms -> inevitable network effects -> inevitable advertising magnet.

Who knows, it could've been MySpace Tom?

facebook is just a glorified blogpost website

I was really hoping for a Snow Crash movie. That project has been in development hell for years. Instead, we got Ready Player One, which is like Snow Crash for dummies. There's a trailer for a low-budget version of Snow Crash.[1] It's awful.

I don't hold out much hope for that project. Snow Crash is about a conspiracy between a media baron and a televangelist to take over the world. That would upset a lot more people now than in 1992.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8WYiYcaRY4

I love Snow Crash too, for what it is, and I'm sure someone could make a worthwhile movie out of exploring the concepts, but then I'm not really sure it's worthwhile, as it wouldn't need to be strictly based on that work.

But if someone is hoping for a scene accurate depiction I'm equally unsure it's possible, or that anyone would want to see it, between everything from the "radical"(/Rule of Cool) Carmageddon pizza delivery for the mafia and variable rollerskate wheel sizes to the main character literally being named Hiro Protagonist.

It's a great nostalgic time capsule for me, which also spawned a lot of other great works, but I'm fine with leaving it as that.

That trailer is brilliant for what it is.

I would love to see a proper version of Snow Crash get theatrical release or maybe even the high-concept-tv-series-with-ten-episodes treatment the big streamers are cooking up these days.

I would watch a full-length movie of Snow Crash in the style of this trailer!

I think it may be a high school student project.

Since I saw Into The Spiderverse, I’ve been hoping for a Snow Crash with that animation style.

Different book/author, but if you haven’t seen A Scanner Darkly then give it a go

Ready Player One was terrible. The secret that was hidden for years was discovered by someone just trying to drive backwards on a racing map that tons of people play every day? I get that it's hard to drive the map backwards, but come the fuck on, gamers would discover that in the first week.

I'm still waiting for a Spawn reboot and universe now that Dune finally got a big budget version. Apparently Voltron too.

Don't give up hope.

CEO: "Bring me the head of whomever is responsible for this metaverse fiasco!" :)

"Uh.. that would be you, Mr. Zuckerberg"

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