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Glassholes then, glassholes now.

Bluesky: OMG, A HYPOCRITE, THEYRE DOING THE HYPOCRITE THING, LOOK

It’s beards for me.

He’s right. It’s a very human thing. If you go back to the caves. Mask were demons and tricksters as they are today.

The author of Don't Build the Torment Nexus would like to remind us that the Torment Nexus is bad.

bsky.app/profile/thev...

I read that book years ago, I remember liking it.

Brain implants for all then?

It has always been this way. Big techs are stupid.

Strong beard game going on there.

Or those who make it.

Mark Z need Billions to learn this lesson. LULZ.

bsky.app/profile/thev...

Yet Atlas Shrugged is a bad book about a good alloy

Agree

I think it's a two-ply problem. You have the thing itself, is IT (the piercing, the tat, the glasses) cool to the group you intend it for? Then, is the intent of the item cool? Items that secretly record are not cool. You have to cross both those hurdles I think.

Same. All so stupid.

Obligatory Torment Nexus comment

Lol...it had potential but it's biggest problem is ALL of my fellow gamers said it gave them a headache...which is why I never even tried it or bought that headset!

Thinking further, I am definitely correct, because I remember at one point his roommate stands between Hiro and the hub, thus blocking his view of the metaverse. That wouldn't be possible with a headset.

Thanks for your family's service, Shaftoe 🫡

Yeah, I don't trust those wearing AR glasses and try to be subtle about it, either.

Behold a company they did not do their market research before rolling out a product and remaking their entire brand around it. I could have told you this at its first rollout.

No kidding

I guess that’s a good point. The book puts usable-for-lengthy-periods VR at the same timeframe as the US is devolved into independent gated communities. We aren’t quite there yet, but the trajectory seems right.

It's like trying to blame basically every sci-fi story with an evil government/empire/whatever where some guys take the wrong things from it. Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Warhammer 40K, and so on. We just live during a time where a tech billionaire can do a literal Nazi salute and get away with it.

He made it pretty explicit in Snow Crash that only losers and dipshits use wearables that connect them to the internet all the time. It's not his fault tech bros skipped English Lit classes in college.

Also, the best parts of Snow Crash occur when the Hiro and the others are outside the Metaverse. Which, I thought, was Stephenson's whole point.

All it takes is for one person to say it, and for us to believe it, to make it real. We can tell tech to fuck off.

Nice way to also swipe at ICE

Snow Crash is one of those guilty pleasures I pull out every now and then. The opening scene leaves me in tears of laughter.

My initial reaction - so what?

Why did they make that creepy Neal Stephenson mannequin

I wear eyeglasses, as do many others. People don't trust us because of them? Yeah, didn't think so. Which means it's just a question of aesthetics -- huge frames with detectable cameras are a no-no. But at some point the HW gets to be small enough to be unnoticeable. What then?

yeah per the book "Snowcrash", the Meta shades are just "stealth" gargoyle shit. No one likes that it turns out.

what I loved about Snow Crash was the pizza franchise run by the Mafia... your pizza in 20 minutes or the head of the Mafia apologises to you. In fact all the franchises... the private themed jails run at the back of convenience stores are surely coming.

I don’t think he trusted them back then either. People wearing recording gear were referred to as gargoyles… not exactly complimentary.

Just another branch of IT destroying the planet. So tired of technology being used to make billionaire's richer, and destroy the environment instead of being used for good. Social Media and AI still are not regulated properly and it's sad. Our government has forsaken us.

It didn't help that Meta ran the metaverse ship aground in the most cringe way possible.

AR glasses without the cameras is the way to go.

I certainly will not be buying these ridiculous things. He's right...it's creepy!

He envisioned a VR that would project images straight onto your retina.

We can make people live in a completely different reality with a little screen they carry in their pocket and look at obsessively.

I love wearing masks on my face. And as a pioneer of the VR industry, loved having a VR set on- I finally was able to help bring future technology to life. Now I’m forced to suffer in a world of Luddites who treat my former highly prestigious career as an evil, when it is amazing and necessary.

But people wear glasses lol 😂

Have you read the book? Yeesh, that's it's main point.

Stephenson confirms he wasn't paid or consulted. I'm also curious about the legality so it's be cool if a lawyer piped up. I *think* that since "metaverse" entered the popular lexicon and he never fought for ownership rights, he couldn't do so now. He coined a term, as opposed to establishing IP.

The pandemic proved that.

That quote isn’t wrong, regardless. I mask up frequently even still, but people don’t like things on their faces and a lot of them are dicks to folks who put masks on.

That's okay because I can't accept the projected idea of implants either. The thought of something artificial in my head does not thrill me nor the idea that the govt could interject itself into my gaming & take control because there is no safe place to isolate oneself from them.

Everybody is the Protagonist of their own story...

That’s Mr. Protagonist to you.

I like the sentiment, but without glasses, I’m blind. I hope people trust me.

If you read the book, he called the characters who wore technology in their faces weird and embarrassing then, too.