Comment by andy99
5 hours ago
Stephenson doesn't just write sci-fi, he writes operating manuals for the future. His books predicted cryptocurrency, the metaverse, and distributed computing before most of us knew what TCP/IP stood for. Warning: his endings are notoriously abrupt, like a segfault in the middle of your favorite function.
This really is a study in AI slop. At least they had the good sense to change it.
Man... "Write a book recommendation for people who like The Big Bang Theory".
I’m gonna start thinking “Bazinga!” every time someone says something borderline ai-sloppy
When they changed it is also when they misspelled his name. Opus got it right. I was surprised Stephenson took the misspelling as an AI tell.
To a version that managed to typo his name.
How did his books PREDICT crypto when we had eCash way before any of his books? SMH.
Most of his books are also dystopias, not operating manuals.
a16z seems to view turning society into a dystopia as a goal, so that makes sense. Their portfolio includes:
- DoubleSpeed, a bot farm as a service provider, allowing customers to orchestrate social media activity across thousands of fake accounts to create artificial consensus on the topic of their choice. Never pay a human again!
- Cheddr, the TikTok of sports gambling, whose differentiating feature is allowing users under 21. Place live in-game bets with just a swipe!
- Coverd, a new type of credit card where you can wipe off bills by betting on your favorite gambling games in their app. No VPN required!
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Can A16Z tell the difference? Insert that meme "At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus, from the classic sci-fi novel, Don't Create the Torment Nexus".
a16z and others like them never met a dystopian warning they didn't interpret as a titillating invitation to an uncomfortably exciting and inevitable future!
Yeah, which book are we talking about? Reamde features crypto heavily, but I remember having bitcoins at the time it came out.
I imagine this is intended (though if it's AI-generated "intended" doesn't really apply) as a reference 1999's Cryptonomicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
From that Wikipedia summary:
> Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency