Mr. Bosworth, have you read Snow Crash?

Alexander Armbruster

Responsible editor for Wirtschaft Online.

  • Follow I follow

Roland Lindner

Business correspondent in New York.

  • Follow I follow

Yes of course.

How did you find that?

A really crazy book.

Have you ever met the author Neal Stephenson?

No, not yet, although he makes the rounds in tech circles.

He published the science fiction novel "Snow Crash" in 1992.

The world in which the book is set has gone through a severe economic crisis, some things have broken down, Los Angeles no longer belongs to the United States, many people are doing badly - and that's why they like to spend time in a virtual world, the metaverse there means that this word appears for the first time.

What inspires you to associate the new vision and the new name of your entrepreneur with it of all things?

“Snow Crash” is a great science fiction book, but of course it's fiction.

In the tech industry, we are always inspired by science fiction, think of the Star Trek technology we dream of.

.

.

.

.

.

absolutely .

.

.

. . . but does that mean that the intergalactic war occurring there inspires us? Of course not. Some parts are very attractive, others dystopian. You might read “Snow Crash” as a critique of capitalism rather than the technology people are using to cope with the collapse of society. The book leaves the causality of the collapse of society to the reader's imagination. But more important is that the metaverse is not defined by a single text, not even by our announcement last week. The metaverse is an idea, an idea of ​​connected virtual spaces. And some of them already exist today. We enter small virtual ecosystems with our smartphones that have their own physics,where certain things are possible and others are not, there are laws and customs of their own. And their nature is very different, even that of those belonging to the same company.

What do you mean?

Instagram and Facebook have different characteristics, and they have different social customs.

There is also a wide range of services overall, interestingly with few connections to one another.

Snap, TikTok, Instagram or Twitter are a bit like silos, little separate worlds.

The question now is: Will there be a possibility in the future for a more immersive, more physical Internet that allows more synchronous experiences with a stronger sense of presence - in contrast to the essentially asynchronous experiences that currently characterize the mobile Internet?

To me, there is little resemblance between the vision we have described and the term coined by Neal Stephenson in 1992.

So you don't need a dystopian scenario to be successful with it?

Not at all.

If you think of the kind of communication that was imagined as science fiction a hundred years ago and that is perfectly normal today, some people may be reluctant to admit it, but humanity is more prosperous and healthier than ever, and so are we make further progress.

Of course there are huge challenges.

Whenever a new medium emerges, it is a challenge for society. It started with book printing and was also the case with radio, television and the Internet.

And that will continue to be the case in the future.