Fuzzy recently opened a discussion (but not comments) comparing Second Life to Snow Crash. Here’s my comment, which may or may not pass moderation:
I could not agree more about ‘Juanita’s faces’ and think avatar improvements are long overdue. My personal favorite would be hand and finger joints and animations (so we could do amazing things like this), but that ain’t happenin’ not with the focus on business over creativity. Those running Linden Labs seem to be sending a clear message that this ain’t your Philip’s SL anymore, for better or worse. To be fair, they have important things like making money to consider above making a toy for creatives to use, which in many ways is a backwards way to look at it (but that’s another discussion). The most frustrating argument to wage with any bottom-liner justifying SL, or any virtual world for business, is the importance of the avatar. Jaunita’s struggles for others to see that importance seem relevant more now than ever. But she did it anyway and everyone realized how key it was later. This is the same as business-types publicly denouncing the importance or relevance of avatar appearance only to secretly come to me or others and ask to help them with their hair/eyes/shape/clothes/shoes (and this has become a regular thing). Why can’t people just admit appearance and presence is core to any real collaborative, social activity–especially in a virtual world that focuses on immersion as the primary justification for 3D over 2D. Perhaps someday, until then, all we can do is play with what we have.
I recommend to those that have not read SnowCrash or Neuromancer (and I have not read the latter, yet), to swallow hard and read them, to the end (not just enough to add hip pith to your presentations). I’ll bet a good 50% of current Linden Labs employees have not read either. I’d love to be wrong.
That said, I hated SnowCrash, deeply. Here’s my original review (reposted from SL profiles, which I don’t use much these days):
Ok, just finished reading Snowcrash. Besides now understanding what everyone is talking about when they say that Neal Stephenson invented the terms ‘avatar’ and ‘metaverse’, which he admits is not exactly true in the appendix (but I won’t spoil the surprise), besides that, and knowing why everyone wears a katana on their back, why you can’t be a Hero (name) in SL, and why everyone likes to make really fast motorcycles in SL, besides that, well, and besides the interesting tangent into Sumerian mythology, and the radically wonderful explanation of divergent languages (I do so love linguistics) and besides the really really really (yes that is three ‘really’s) cool plank that Y.T. rides with telescoping wheels, and the Aleutian ocean surfing Raven pulls off, and the dog-brained rat things, besides all that I just must say I didn’t like it overall.
It was not a shock to me to read in Neal’s comments that originally it was intended as a collaborative work with a graphic novelist but that just didn’t work out. Neal’s writing style is amazingly different, fresh and the way he narrates the thoughts of everything, even inanimate objects makes it fun. I particularly liked his description of what a cute doggy thinks after it’s been turned into a radio-isotope-driven rat thing (here’s a hint, it thinks the same things).
I just have to say for me it was anticlimactic and devoid of any real reason to care, in fact, after his description of one possible near future–everything franchulated (his word), loglo and toxic waste everywhere, everyone pumping guns or steroids, 15-year-olds sleeping with psychopathic killers who turn out to be just nice guys doing their jobs (woops, I gave that surprise away, sorry)–well I just found myself not caring if the villain succeeded in the first place. “So what if the world is destroyed, or whatever.” Plus it doesn’t resolve any of the real relationship possibilities that it could have. I really wanted to see Y.T. meet up with Uncle Enzo in the end. Nope. Characters are shallow, colored-in drawings more fitting to a comic or pop-movie screen ala Matrix. And for that reason I would still recommend it. It is like watching an R-rated thrill-ride movie without the movie.
At least I can say I read the thing unlike so many poser ‘metaverse-evangelists’ out there referencing it without having a clue what they are talking about, or worse, making safe references to some Snowcrash-izm in front of a room of business people and a microphone that can’t question them on it so they can trick people into thinking they read it. You know who you are. Give Snow Crash a read. You can have mine. Just keep your expectations low and some f-bomb deodorizer around.
It may turn out that SL or whatever the leading virtual world becomes will be devoid of these Snow Crash items. SL might not have advanced animations and other smoothness that Crysis and WoW have, but hey, you can build and script a rat-thing, which is still pretty cool. /me looks through his inventory for radio isotopes.
