Neal Stephenson
From uvvy
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson
In the novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson defined many of the concepts and terms used in Virtual reality, such as Metaverse and Avatar.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The science fiction novel Snow Crash (1992), written by Neal Stephenson, follows in the footsteps of the cyberpunk novels by such authors as William Gibson and Rudy Rucker, though Stephenson breaks away from the typical "techno punk" stories by embellishing this story with a heavy dose of satire and black humor.
Snow Crash (Stephenson's third novel) rocketed to the top of the fiction best-seller charts upon its release and established Stephenson as a major science fiction writer for the 1990s. It has made it onto the list of Time Magazine's All-Time 100 Best Novels.
The story takes place in a semi-America of the future, where corporatization, franchising, and the economy in general have spun wildly out of control. Snow Crash depicts the absence of a central powerful state; in its place, corporations have taken over the traditional roles of government, including dispute resolution and national defense. The United States has lost most of its territory in the wake of an economic collapse; the residual remains of the federal government are weak and inefficient and are used by Stephenson for comic relief.
Much of the territory lost by the government has been carved up into a huge number of sovereign enclaves, each run by its own big business franchise (such as "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong" or the various residential burbclaves). This arrangement bears a similarity to anarcho-capitalism, a theme Stephenson carries over to his next novel The Diamond Age. Hyperinflation has devalued the dollar to the extent that trillion dollar bills, Ed Meeses, are little regarded and the quadrillion dollar note, a Gipper, is the standard 'small' bill. For large transactions, people resort to alternative, non-hyperinflated currencies like yen or "Kongbucks" (the official currency of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong).
The Metaverse, Stephenson's successor to the Internet, permeates ruling-class activities, and constitutes Stephenson's vision of how a virtual reality-based Internet might evolve in the near future. Although there are public-access MetaVerse terminals in Reality, using them carries a social stigma among MetaVerse denizens, in part because of the low visual quality of the avatars (the MetaVerse representation of a user). In the MetaVerse, status is a function of two things: access to restricted environments (such as the Black Sun, an exclusive MetaVerse club) and technical acumen (often demonstrated by the sophistication of one's avatar).
Examples of Metaverse -like "worlds" in reality are There, Second Life, The Palace, Uru, and Active Worlds, which is based entirely on Snow Crash. Some also consider massively multiplayer online RPGs to be similar to the Metaverse as well.
In the novel "The Diamond Age" Stephenson built another credible and imaginative future scenario, this time centered on nanotechnology.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Age
Wikipedia: "The world is divided into many phyles, also known as tribes. There are three Great Phyles; in alphabetical order, they are the Han (consisting of Han Chinese), the Neo-Victorians (consisting largely of Anglo-Saxons, but also accepting Indians, Africans, and others who identify with the culture), and Nippon (consisting of Japanese). The novel deliberately makes it ambiguous whether Hindustan (consisting of Hindu Indians) is a fourth Great Phyle or an association of microphyles. In addition to these larger phyles, there are countless smaller phyles. Membership in some phyles, such as the Han and Nipponese, has an ethnic requirement, but the Neo-Victorian phyle and many lesser phyles accept anyone who aspires to live according to the phyle's mores (for example, one of the Neo-Victorian aristocrats is actually of Korean origin).
Nanotechnology is omni-present, generally in the form of Matter Compilers and the products that come out of them. The book explicitly recognizes achievements of several existing nanotechnology researchers: Feynman, Drexler and Merkle are seen among characters of the fresco in Merkle-Hall, where new nanotechnological items are 'constructed'".
