Miévillians discussion
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Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson: SNOW CRASH
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Snow Crash Thread 1: From start to end of Chapter 10
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Traveller, it seems to me that the Metaverse and the Street is particular are not anonymous. The Street seems to require payment for use, and even if it doesn't, it could very well require some form of identity verifiability like e.g. purchasings things on Amazon or purchasing a high-grade domain certificate will. If identity must be verified, then a sufficiently priviledged hacker, as Hiro obviously is, could surely know who a person is irrespective of their avatar.
J. wrote: "Traveller, it seems to me that the Metaverse and the Street is particular are not anonymous. The Street seems to require payment for use, and even if it doesn't, it could very well require some for..."You mean there is a camera looking at the person sitting at the keyboard who is controlling the avatar? Because surely that is the only way to know who is controlling the avatar? Unless they're making use of thumbprint technology- really? In a universe where digital video media does not even exist? It just doesn't gel.
What has who paid for the account got to do with who is using the account? Your comment doesn't address the question.
Oh, I see what you mean: how does one account for unauthorized access. Well, the ability of VR goggles to scan a user's retinas is a possibilty. That is a bit of a stretch, though.
Being, how does Hiro know just by looking at them from afar, that he is seeing kids who are using their parent's laptops/accounts?
J. wrote: "Oh, I see what you mean: how does one account for unauthorized access. Well, the ability of VR goggles to scan a user's retinas is a possibilty. That is a bit of a stretch, though."Well, if I pay for my son's Steam account, and he uses it, it's hardly unauthorized, is it? (And take note, my son and I could have completely different surnames, as is the case with my sister and her children who decided to keep her maiden name as that is the name she had graduated with. )
Like I said, they still use videotapes in the story for Pete's sake, and they check out videotapes from a physical library as opposed to an online one, so... retinal scans? Yeah right. ;)
Indicators on a HUD, I suppose. While the text does not state a HUD is available, it is ambiguous enough about how software tools interact with the world to suggest there might be one. Anyway, if the passage you're referring to is at the start of Chapter 5, then Hiro merely infers they are -probably- using their parents' computers; he's not working from authoritative fact, but rather making an educated guess---I would imagine based on such things as the quality of their avatars (which if they are good would require expensive hardware and an expensive software package which kids could not afford themselves) and a combination of inside knowledge of authentication and body language (which, inexplicably, apparently can translate to the Metaverse).
Or he could just be talking out of his ass. ;)
J. wrote: "Indicators on a HUD, I suppose. While the text does not state a HUD is available, it is ambiguous enough about how software tools interact with the world to suggest there might be one. Anyway, if..."
..but, my dearest J, would a retinal scan show you the age of the person you are scanning? I guess I'm just not clued up enough on retinal scanning tech.
I could be mistaken, but retinal patterns are, I believe, supposed to be unique (otherwise they would not be used for authentication challenges) and could certainly be cross-referenced with records of birth, which would establish age.I confess that's very speculative, but it might be a reasonable explanation for why Hiro could speak with authority---which he didn't, anyway.
Traveller wrote: "You mean there is a camera looking at the person sitting at the keyboard who is controlling the avatar? Because surely that is the only way to know who is controlling the avatar? "Heavens, no! Even today's technology is capable of determining who you are with fairly good accuracy (not accurate enough to be considered 'secure') just by the way you type (not terribly surprising, since Morse telegraph operators could do that a hundred years ago). Obviously, there is some kind of authentication involved in getting into the metaverse, so there are three scenarios: the account is used by the person who pays for it; the account is being used by an unauthorized person, in which case I'd expect that if Hiro could tell it wasn't the authorized user, then so could the system security, and the user would have been booted; or the account is paid for by one person for authorized use by someone else, in which case the login records would have to reflect it — and I expect Hiro can access that information.
LOL, guys! I'm going to come back to this when I'm a bit further on in the book, but honestly, that he could tell all of that in the few moments that the 'kids' walked across his field of vision... Nevermind, its not worth the energy we're expending on it.
We don't actually know how long he was looking at them, though. The text only states that he sees them. That it then proceeds to mention a series of details about their avatars and digresses into Hiro's musings about this and that relating to their social statuses and what have you, and -then he loses sight of them, suggests to me it was much more than a momentary glance. Sorry for ganging up on you, though, dear Traveller!
I guess only Neal Stephenson fanbois would spend so much time defending silly inconsistencies in his books, and I'm not either one or the other, so as I said, I'll leave it be for now. I feel like Casaubon did at the end of Foucault's Pendulum!
J. wrote: "Oh, I see what you mean: how does one account for unauthorized access. Well, the ability of VR goggles to scan a user's retinas is a possibilty. That is a bit of a stretch, though."..but just to say one last thing about it: if, as you and Derek has said, this truly was a case of unauthorized access of kids using their parents accounts, and Hiro knew it because the system picked it up, then why oh why didn't the system boot them off, like Derek has already pointed out?
Heh, they have retinal scans of everybody in existence in the world, and every time a person logs in, the software compares the retinal scan to some world database of retinal scans, but, their hardware and software can't even handle a simple thing such as collision detection! ROFL.But the computer system that operates the Street has better things to do than to monitor every single one of the millions of people there, trying to prevent them from running into each other. It doesn't bother trying to solve this incredibly difficult problem. On the Street, avatars just walk right through each other.
Even games from back in the late nineties had collision detection...
Anyway, nevermind, one should obviously take the whole thing with a huge dollop of salt. I mean, I could laugh at the pizza business, couldn't I? :P
Even games back in the late nineties could tell when one (or maybe even two or three) independent avatar collided with one of maybe a dozen under the control of the program. That's not remotely the same as handling collision detection amongst millions of independent actors.And, no, I didn't say this was unauthorized access. I presume it's authorized access. I'm fairly sure Hiro could only know that it's kids using their parents accounts if they actually are authorized as secondary users on the account.
Fanboi? (view spoiler)
The lack of collision detection is apparently deliberate rather than a technical limitation. It's implied that it's the simplest means of crowd control: crowds simply occupy 0 space on the Street itself, so everyone is always free to go where they wish and cannot be blocked by malicious (or simply busy) users. I certainly would have appreciated a lack of collision detection in many places in Morrowind!
Indeed, this is borne out in actuality: the online games I've played have no inter-player collision detection unless one is playing PVP. This is a convenience for the users rather than the servers.
That said, I can do nothing but agree that the concept and apparent implementation of the Metaverse is riddled with holes, contraditions and conceits which, in hindsight, are absurd. I'm just going with the flow, lest I go mad. ;)
J. wrote: "The lack of collision detection is apparently deliberate rather than a technical limitation. It's implied that it's the simplest means of crowd control: crowds simply occupy 0 space on the Street i..."But that's the point--the way you put it, it makes sense. The way NS words it, it doesn't. Funny how a totally strange fantasy world can be a lot more immersive than something that you're familiar with that's presented, erm... less than optimally.
I'm going to try and imagine I'm a person from the swinigin' Sixties while I read this, lest I go mad myself. (It's already psychedelic enough as it is).
That's the Uncanny Valley in action, I think. To overcome it I seem to be inserting my own justifications for facts presented...
Come to think of it, I wonder if Stephenson considered or was even aware of the concept of the Uncanny Valley when he wrote Snow Crash. Now that I think about it, the Street would probably be a very uncomfortable place, with realistic facial expressions, but everything else kind of fake-looking...
I wasn't.Looked it up here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncann... ( for any of you equally unenlightened) Fascinating!
I wonder if the Swedish series Äkta människor (Real humans) was/is aware of this theory....
Yes, that's very interesting! NS is so close, but just off for most of the time. Now, if he had done something like the Matrix, or a system like in the movie Avatar, I guess that would have been cool and different enough not give this weird feeling of: "but that's not quite it!As a sidenote, I found this a very odd thing to say: "She was the face department, because nobody thought that faces were all that important -- they were just flesh-toned busts on top of the avatars.
Heavens! Faces are so much more than 'flesh-toned busts' !!!??? :O They're what we express ourselves with, they're the main denotation of our identity. I can't imagine anyone ever thinking any the less... See, that's an example of how his ideas seem 'off' to me.
I had thought it meant that is how they thought of faces before Juanita came along and worked on them. And if those early, pre - Juanita, programmers were all men, I am not at all surprised they hadn't thought faces were all that important (present company of men excepted, of course).
Ruth wrote: "I had thought it meant that is how they thought of faces before Juanita came along and worked on them. And if those early, pre - Juanita, programmers were all men, I am not at all surprised they h..."Yeah, I know, and me being female, maybe that's the point... maybe guys would think that way, and its not a coincidence that Juanita was female. At that point of the story, I couldn't make up my mind if NS was being sexist, or the opposite!
I've been wondering, btw. whatever happened to Juanita's pregnancy? We learn somewhere earlier on, that she'd fallen pregnant before marrying Da5id, but her child is never mentioned?
I also wonder how one pronounces 'Da5id'.
I think the opposite...his female characters are strong. I think I shouldn't say anything about her pregnancy I have finished the book :)I keep saying Dashid, but it's probably Dasid.
I'll chime in and say it's probably "David", the 5 standing in cheekily for V.
I can only speculate, being neither female nor the aggregate of the world's programmers, but I think that since programmers will often communicate to each other remotely via text and ultimately end up pouring out their souls through code (which is written as text), I think maybe I can understand what Stephenson was getting at: while body language is often at least as important as what you say and how you say, this may not have been obvious to the general corps of programmers out there, and in particular to theose tinkering with the Street in its early days, because their interactions with computers don't factor in facialk expressions.I don't think the argument makes much sense, though: the average programmer watches enough movies and TV to know that facial expressions can convey meaning more succinctly and eloquently than words, in the right circumstance.
Plus, like animating fluid realistically, it's an interesting challenge. I find it highly unlikely it would be overlooked.
Oh, of course it's David. Good catch, J.
Traveller wrote: "Yes, that's very interesting! NS is so close, but just off for most of the time. Now, if he had done something like the Matrix, or a system like in the movie Avatar, I guess that would have been ..."Ugh, no! This is what made it seem so totally right to Marta and I. The Matrix is not believable in any foreseeable manner. Gibson's cyberpunk works because it delves into a computerized future in ways that are totally new. They might not be achievable, but there is a clear break from current paradigms so that you can't forecast current trends and say that they won't result in his future. The Matrix, imo, tries to push current technology to places it can't possibly reach. Stephenson follows Gibson in ways, but what made it so totally workable for us is that we can see current tech going there. Which is why I find the post-cyberpunk label so laughable, as it is imo pre-cyberpunk, if anything.
Ruth, there's probably no need to exclude present company re: faces. I know I don't pay nearly as much attention to faces as my wife, though that may be autism rather than a Y chromosome — I'd suggest that autism is probably far more common amongst programmers/hackers than the general population. But that also fits. I know _intellectually_ that "facial expressions convey meaning succinctly", but I'm completely baffled as to how to use that in a program.
And I couldn't figure out the logic in Da5id either!
"flesh toned busts" doesn't mean that they can't see a use for faces. It means that they couldn't figure out a way to use them, and that they didn't see a great need in what was essentially a text-based MUD (multi-user domain). Until you get faces, and similar graphic complexities, the graphics are just icing. I watch people playing various games today, and despite the fancy graphics, they don't seem that different from when I was playing Zork in the late 70s (which is not to say there aren't any more advanced games, but I'm long past being into that scene). You need to make the avatars much more realistic before you can progress beyond the text-based MUD.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Yes, that's very interesting! NS is so close, but just off for most of the time. Now, if he had done something like the Matrix, or a system like in the movie Avatar, I guess tha..."Ah, but that' the whole point with applying the 'uncanny valley' concept to the argument. The Matrix and Avatar is so far removed from what we're doing today, (although Avatar is probably do-able, mind), that it feels immersive-it's like the robots in Star Wars--the design of those robots are intuitively made to NOT resemble humans too closely or they would have been creepy instead of cute.
So, what I'm saying is that Stephenson's ideas are close enough to be creepy, but not close enough to be spot on. It's like watching a 3D movie without 3D glasses.
I watch people playing various games today, and despite the fancy graphics, they don't seem that different from when I was playing Zork in the late 70s (which is not to say there aren't any more advanced games, but I'm long past being into that scene). You need to make the avatars much more realistic before you can progress beyond the text-based MUD. ..."
Good grief! What have you been playing? Zork is so ancient that only a few people have the patience to try and get it going on modern PC's bec you need about a million patches and tweaks and then you still sit with with ancient graphics, and REALLY crappy movement, and just everything about it is totally ancient.
This is what modern games look like:
(Grr, and now of course I won't find a vid that has a nice resolution, so the graphics look crappy) - I should take some screenshots and show you - but keep in mind that these games have full 3-D and realistic physics- for instance you can pick things up and throw and bounce them in a realistic manner)
Ugh, and unfortunately the only vid I could find with a nice resolution to show you where gaming is at today technically speaking, contains extreme violence and gore, unfortunately, even by modern standards, and DEFINITELY not suitable for sensitive viewers.
(view spoiler)
Boo, all the more popular modern games have a lot of violence- what does that say about our society? Anyway, these ones are a bit better re the violence, but it's still there, unfortunately. Please remember to set your vid setting (at the little gear icon) on at least 1080pp (preferably 1 440 or if your screen doesn't support higher, then at least 720) when viewing these, or you won't get the idea of what the games look like in-game.
This gives you more or less an idea of action games' gameplay, though the graphics in the vid look like they're more Xbox graphics, and badly encoded anyway, so you might not get an idea of how awesome the graphics actually look on a PC screen of someone who has a high-end system and top of the range graphics processing unit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqDbQD...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUrHIK...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qCUD2...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pejku_...
Here's a medley:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9qQRo...
Unfortunately, the other vids that do come at a high resolution, either feature sex and nudity or more violence, so I can't seem to win here. Guess people like to make vids of sex and violence. :P
In any case, suffice it to say that faces and bodies look like this in modern games - quite a far cry from Zork, I'd say!! Plus Zork definitely didn't have 3D physics and multi-surround sound, just for starters.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: " You need to make the avatars much more realistic before you can progress beyond the text-based MUD. ..."Um...text-based MUD? Keep in mind that modern gamers play with headsets with microphones and they talk to their buddies, with their voices, and this is what also appears to be the situation in NS's simulation scenario in Snow Crash (although I must tell you that there are a myriad inconsistencies in his scenario); I mean, yes, ask yourself why people would bother going through the motions of virtual bodies in virtual space just to talk to one another, when they can talk to one another in voice and vid on a platform such as Skype, and you have much more privacy on Skype or the telephone besides.
But it's still essentially verbal. Perhaps I should have said 'verbal MUD'. Because the avatars, however realistic they appear, don't react. Which is why I say that, despite the graphics, they're not that different from Zork (and yes, I've played far more recent games, but I chose Zork precisely because it's antediluvian). The point of Juanita's faces appears to be that they really do provide the full feedback you'd get via Skype, while not necessarily being photo-realistic. We're arguing somewhat at cross purposes. I agree that the Uncanny Valley effect may well be in play, though I suspect it's more of a localized phenomenon—seeing avatars walk through each other on the Street, or facial expression on highly-pixelated black and white shapes is hardly likely to trigger the effect, while sitting across from Juanita might. What makes Snow Crash work for me is that it extrapolates extremely well from current tech; so well, that even though the book is now over 20 years old, there's not much that's proving to have been mispredicted: I'm not sure where you got the notion that they're still using analog media, except from the mentions of videotape— and I remember hearing a radio producer say a couple of years back that she still referred to her "tape recorder" though she'd been digital for a decade! I can't find a single reference to "analog". Still, a smart editor would have thought to have him remove references to specific media.
As for privacy, while I don't recall any mention of it up to chapter 25 (where I am right now), I'm fairly certain the Metaverse provides for totally private communication. People don't go to the Black Sun for private meetings (though they can probably have them there). Just like a popular nightclub in Reality, they go to the Black Sun to be seen. Technically, why would it be
I'm sure I'm straying far beyond chapter 10...
Sorry, I got behind with the book. I intend catching up ASAP and posting the next thread. How about I open the next thread and you go ahead with commenting on it, Derek, and then I'll use the time to catch up in the meantime.Yes, ok, I do get your point re the verbal vs body-language. Remember that I posted a link to the Kinect earlier. It senses your movement and represents your movement onscreen. Juanita's faces would represent a highly sophisticated version of the Kinect.
But here again, I must point out that hardware is involved. I imagine the visor you wear for the Metaverse would sense your facial movement.
Okay, we can discuss it more in the next thread...
Btw, I must admit that I'm enjoying Y.T. :)
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: I'm not sure where you got the notion that they're still using analog media, except from the mentions of videotape— "Yes, he keeps referring to "tape". Not very smart if you already have CD, DVD and other digital media in your current world. (I mean NS had it already at the time of writing, the book was published in 1992 and CD technology became available or at the very least was on the cards by 1980. )
Old fashioned videotape worked on an analog basis.
The thing is where to find players for your old tapes? They don't make them anymore.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Just like a popular nightclub in Reality, they go to the Black Sun to be seen..."Being an antisocial stay-at-homer myself, I always thought people went to nightclubs to party and get pissed and pick up dates, ha, so what do I know.
But okay, so let's say they're going to be seen. Why on earth would one go to a virtual nightclub, where it's not you anybody is seeing, it's just some pixels supposedly representing your presence in cyberspace.
But nevermind, we can discuss in a later thread.
The next thread is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Miévillians
Books mentioned in this topic
Snow Crash (other topics)Ready Player One (other topics)
Reamde (other topics)
The Name of the Rose (other topics)
Foucault’s Pendulum (other topics)
Probably the same way that he has an edge in sword fights, and can run his cus..."
Yeah, like I say, I can understand more money for avatars with more features, but the resolution (which is what makes things like pixelly- they look pixelly and block-ish at a low resolution, and anti-aliasing can smooth the edges, yes) but these are just as much features of one's hardware as the software you're using. Old software was made to run on low resolutions, because old hardware didn't have enough RAM, processing power and other features that our GPU's have these days, like AA, vertical sync, vertex and pixel shading, SSAO, bump mapping, 3-D rendering in synch with 3-D sound, texture mapping, Cull/Clip, Rasterization and Z-Cullbuffering, depth-testing... okay, this is going far beyond my point, which was merely to say the the "money" you sink into making graphics look good, tends to be on the hardware side. (In modern graphics processing units, one tends to pay for faster speeds, more RAM, and features like the abovementioned).
Still, things like Anti-aliasing is part of the rendering hardware-(and by rendering (verb), I mean not only the drawing(verb) of the image when they are created, but the drawing (verb) of the image on your screen by the hardware that allows you to view the images on your screen.)
I suppose the point is that the pixelly avatars were made by hackers who could only afford cheap hardware, and who could consequently only make really primitive-looking models and who wanted to make a quick buck by selling lots of the same-looking model for cheap-cheap. So only noobs and people who don't have lots of cash would go for them.
Be that as it may, NS is obviously trying to build a virtual society similar to that of the Real World, by having some people 'look' cheaper and more derivative than others, so let me stop nitpicking on the details. :P
But re knowing the identity of people behind avatars without even conversing with them---um, well, Derek, for all I know you could be a 25 year old woman. Or, an 80 year old man, how am I to know?