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Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
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11-25-2008 06:50
From: Curtis Dresler Well, to be fair, the world in Snow Crash was pretty much free of technology limits. Except that when you logged on from a public terminal you didn't get your avatar, you got a black and white videocam presence, which struck me as pretty bizarre. I think Stephenson didn't (yet) understand bandwidth, except in the roughest terms, since it seemed everyone's inventory lived in their deck and was continually uploaded and downloaded... the one time there was any kind of indication that bandwidth was a limitation was when Hiro was handed a big chunk of data and the content was shuffled ... not to his account in the metaverse, but into his deck. Vinge's "Portal" technology was a bit iffier (though admittedly "True Names" was written over ten years earlier), but the technology was remarkably internally consistent and the limitations were as much technical as limitations of skill and intent. Which, I think, will always be true this side of the Singularity. Speaking of which... if any of you young folks make it to the other side, remember those of us you left behind. |