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EVERY SPOKEN WORD
70 min read · 14,296 words- 0:00 – 1:20
Introduction
- NSNeal Stephenson
We absolutely do not need AR and VR, uh, in order to build the Metaverse.
- SSSteph Smith
[upbeat music] I have a feeling you've heard the term Metaverse. Well, that term is actually 30 years old, originally coined by Neal Stephenson in his book Snow Crash. Fast-forward to 2022, and numerous companies are now building towards their version of the Metaverse, including Neal himself, working on Lamina1, a blockchain company oriented around creators. And while the present Metaverse doesn't perfectly mimic what Stephenson had envisioned, we had to bring him in to discuss the design decisions he's making, but also the evolving intersection between the Metaverse and gaming, the involvement of AR and VR, the evolving role of IP, artificial intelligence, and of course, we had to ask him where he gets all of his ideas from. I hope you enjoy this episode.
- SPSpeaker
The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. For more details, please see a16z.com/disclosures.
- SSSteph Smith
[upbeat music] Hey, Neal. Welcome to the podcast.
- NSNeal Stephenson
It's great to be here, and thanks for inviting me.
- 1:20 – 4:45
Tech's highest impact position
- SSSteph Smith
Well, it's really great to have you, and I'm excited to talk about the Metaverse, probably the topic you're sick of talking about at this point. [laughs]
- NSNeal Stephenson
I've heard of it.
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs] You certainly have heard of it. You coined it around three decades ago, so we will definitely be diving into that. But before we do, I wanted to get your take on a tweet that I saw recently. I actually saw it last week, and the tweet says, "Science fiction novelist is the highest impact position in the tech industry." And we'll be, of course, crediting Francois Chalet who said that. But what's your take on that? Any immediate reactions to that?
- NSNeal Stephenson
It's an interesting take, and I think there might be something to it. I've been talking about this for a while, particularly with, um, the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. I was on a panel years ago with Michael Crow, who's the president of Arizona State, and he's... He was kind of getting onto this theme. We were talking about the fact that in some cases, not all, but some cases, a science fiction novel can serve as a kind of template or a roadmap to organize the activities of a company or an open source group that's more effective than typical corporate communication strategies. So if you look at a big company where there's a lot of different engineering teams and creative teams trying to coordinate their strategy, there is a huge amount of energy and mind share that gets burned on just trying to keep everybody straight on, you know, with the same, uh, unifying vision, working toward the same plan. And typically, that takes the form of, you know, PowerPoint decks and endless meetings and discussions. It seems that in some cases it's possible for a science fiction novel to kind of replace all of that. If everyone reads the book, everyone kinda gets it. It acts kind of like a, a magnetic field that organizes all of the iron filings, you know, so they're kind of aimed in the same direction. Of course, there's some science fiction novels where that's not gonna happen because they're set in a very distant future, or they, you know, they just don't... Uh, they're just not applicable. Uh, there's other ones that, that seem to have that effect in some cases. And, uh, and so that... So as a result of that conversation, um, uh, we actually set up a, a project to create a science fiction anthology called Hieroglyph that was... came out in, I think, 2013, 2014, that was meant to consist of stories that would... that might have that kind of value or that utility to them.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah, because I think a lot of people look to nonfiction for insight into reality, but I think often we forget that we're storytelling creatures, and that people within an organization, I like that you use this idea of a magnet. In order to get aligned, there, there almost needs to be a degree of emotion there to really foresee some sort of future. And I think what's been fascinating about many of your books is that they've stood the test of time. If we use Snow Crash as an example, three decades ago, many of the things that you predicted within that novel have come to, come to be. Whereas many companies, 'cause you brought up the idea that it's really hard to align people within companies, they struggle to set a mission or a vision for a couple years that people can get behind. So I think that long-standing alignment i- is really, really
- 4:45 – 7:04
What is the metaverse?
- SSSteph Smith
interesting, and I think one, one analogous thing that we're seeing in the industry is this idea of the Metaverse, and many people are using this term. I think there's a degree of disalignment in terms of what the hell that actually means. I mean, to give a couple examples, are we in the Metaverse as we're recording this conversation? If there's an online auction, is that in the Metaverse? If I'm staring at my phone for an hour intently watching TikTok, am I in the Metaverse? And so as someone who coined the term, and I know not everyone will agree with your definition or your perspective, but I am curious to hear from you, what do you think of as the Metaverse per se?
- NSNeal Stephenson
In general, to, to address the specific things that you mentioned, um, I think anything that's being used a lot today, um, uh, probably is not very Metaverse-like. Because in general, when people talk about the Metaverse, they're talking about the next thing that's coming along. And so if it exists today, that suggests that maybe it's a pre... largely a pre-Metaverse thing. But there are some exceptions that we can talk about in certain kinds of games and other experiences, uh, that I think are kind of on-ramps. You know, one of my... One of the most basic ones is do we talk about the Metaverse- Or metaverses, plural. And, um, so my, my colleague, uh, Tony Parisi, has got seven rules of the metaverse, and rule number one is that there's only the metaverse. There's not a bunch of metaverses. So that, for me, is a strong indicator. If I see someone talking about our metaverse or a metaverse, yeah, I immediately begin to question whether they've really got it. Um, whereas if somebody talks about our... The thing, what we're building in the metaverse, that gives me more of a warm feeling, uh, about what they're doing. A- and I think that's because a central idea of the metaverse, at least in the book, is that there is just one of them, and that doesn't mean that it's all kind of the same thing everywhere. Far from it. It's a incredibly diverse range of experiences, but you can always get from one to the other, um-
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah
- NSNeal Stephenson
... wh- by moving around in a single unitary space.
- 7:04 – 9:17
Interoperability
- SSSteph Smith
Right. There's a degree of interoperability, right, between one and another. I'm curious to hear your perspective on that, though, because I guess your point is that we haven't made it to the metaverse yet, but many of the on-ramps, you could say now, whether it's gaming or social or degrees of immersion that we have online, don't really have these connections, right? So, so many of them are disparate from one another, and so do you think that will change? I know we're gonna get into your company, Lamina1, and I know there's other efforts by, by parties in, quote-unquote, the "metaverse space." I think there was a consortium of 37 companies recently that came together to discuss this. But to get back to the question, do you see this changing? Because this has not been the precedent in the last, you know, couple decades.
- NSNeal Stephenson
I do see it changing. There's not gonna be one top-down big boss that says, "Here's how it's all going to work." It's gonna be sort of ad hoc arrangements of people trying to work together. I think that the closest things that we currently can see to metaverse-like experiences are games like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, where you've got a bunch of people running around in a space. They're all experiencing the same space at the same time. I mean, there might be shards, um, but, uh, but the idea is there, that you're, you're going to a place and you're sharing it with other people. They've got huge user bases and, and, you know, because of the, the revenue that, that those generate and just the sheer amount of experience that those companies can rack up by r- running those operations from day to day, you know, they're kind of the leading candidates for coming together to build metaverse-type experiences. And I know that they're all actively thinking about this and how to do it, and I suspect that they're talking to one another about how do we build a bridge from our game or our experience to your game so that a person could go from one to the other. Uh, it may take some years to, to really, uh, come together, but, um, but I think it will come together and, um, you know, I'm excited to, uh, to see it happen and maybe be part
- 9:17 – 14:00
Incentive alignment
- NSNeal Stephenson
of it.
- SSSteph Smith
I'm curious to know, though, if you think the incentives are aligned for that future to be the future that we move towards because if you think about it from the, let's say, the game developer side, some of those game developers may have incentives to not want to interoperate, right? So to keep their users within their game and not move to another game. And then you can also look at it from the consumer perspective that perhaps consumers or the gamers themselves, some of them may really want this interoperability, but some of them may actually want those developers to focus on advancing that centralized game that they love so much. And so I'm curious to know how you think about that, and also, I'm sure you've seen some of the pushback even within the gaming community around this idea of interoperability and the integration of Web3 or some of these open standards, and so what's your take on that?
- NSNeal Stephenson
Uh, there's a kind of people-talking-past-each-other, uh, phenomenon where you've got, uh, game developers interacting with crypto bros on social media, and they don't always get along. Let's put it... That's, that, that's putting it mildly, right? So the game developer mentality, um, [sniffs] or their position may be like this. I'm a game developer. I've spent my whole career developing a, an advanced skill set that I'm very proud of. This is very important to me, and building unified experiences, uh, for people to, to play in. Um, and every aspect of the art direction, the sound design, gameplay, the backstory, the programming, the engineering, it's all just exquisitely tuned in to deliver a particular kind of experience. Um, [lip smack] and, um, so when somebody shows up, you know, uh, wanting to bring extraneous, uh, things into my game, it's bad on two levels. And, uh, o- o- one is just that on an engineering level, to even suggest that kind of shows total ignorance of how games actually work. So it's kind of in the not even wrong category of, of bad ideas. And the other objection is aesthetic. Um, so it's, it's just kind of an abomination to think of, you know, bringing a lightsaber into Assassin's Creed or, y- you know, something like that.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah.
- NSNeal Stephenson
And it's an insult to, um, to game developers. Um, and i- it's reasonable for them to feel insulted by those suggestions. Games like that may be a little bit like a ren fair. You know, you go to a Renaissance fair agreeing to step into a medieval world for a few hours because you dig that. You like being in that environment, and it's just, it's not acceptable to, um, uh, to, m- uh, have m- kind of modern distractions in that environment. On the other hand, there's other games that are, that are popular, extremely popular, which I've, I've already mentioned, you know, Fortnite, um, Minecraft and so on. Those games are creative mashups by design. So you can go into Fortnite, and you can see a four-person team that consists of Iron Man and John Wick and Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Silver Surfer, and they're all running around playing together, and, um, it's fine. It's, it's, uh, n- no one has a problem with that because it's just part of the vibe of those kinds of games. Um, and that vibe, that kind of mashup vibe, is explicitly what's described in the book Snow Crash as, you know, how the, the metaverse kind of looks. There is a future for interoperability in the context of those mashup style games, um, and that, uh, it's out of those kinds of games that we'll begin to see interoperability. That doesn't mean that it's gonna be mandatory or that, you know, every game somehow is gonna be compelled to, uh, allow extraneous garbage into their finely tuned, beautiful worlds. And indeed, as you pointed out, the people who love those games and play those games would hate that, you know? I, I play a lot of Valheim myself, and it's a beautifully designed game that's a coherent world, and it would be extremely irritating for somebody to show up, you know, in that world with a blaster and start, you know, vaporizing, uh, me and my, my Viking
- 14:00 – 17:37
Immersion requirements
- NSNeal Stephenson
buddies. So I think we can have both, um, and that, um, uh, you know, a lot of the, the controversy that has, uh, that we've been seeing the last, you know, year or so on social media, you know, arises from kind of this friction between the, the sort of almost ideological commitment to crypto and interoperability that you see on the part of crypto bros clashing with, with designers who, uh, who, who think it's stupid on an engineering level and kind of an abomination on a aesthetic level.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah, I think, I think it's really important that you're bringing up the engineering side of this because it's not just how we want these worlds to look, but it also how they align with our engineering capabilities. And of course, one way that these games are advancing is through augmented and virtual reality, or at least some of them are venturing into these new worlds. I'd love to hear your take on the importance of that, whether these metaverses do need to be in, quote unquote, "3D," or whether actually many of them can survive and continue to thrive in the two-dimensional world that many people are participating in, because that really is the world that many of us are used to, right? Staring at our phones, staring at screens. And many people, even though they're not truly immersed, right, they're not in the three d- third dimension, they feel quite immersed still. They feel like, you know, they, they stop playing their game after five hours, and they feel like they've truly been in another world. So what are your thoughts on the level of immersion required for this, quote unquote, "metaverse"?
- NSNeal Stephenson
We absolutely do not need AR and VR, uh, in order to build the metaverse. And I... 30 years ago when I wrote the book, I had a different view of it, and so I assumed that it would be all about goggles. Um, a lot has changed since then, and we've all learned a lot. Doom came out the year after Snow Crash was published, and it's kind of almost hard to remember a time when there weren't games like Doom, meaning games where your screen is a, a flat window into a three-dimensional world. Um, and so if you had described Doom to me, you know, in 1992, said, "Well, you're... Okay, you're looking at a flat panel screen in front of you on a monitor, but you're seeing a 3D world through it, and you're running around in that world," I'm not sure if I would've understood it or believed that that could ever really work very well. Um, but now, you know, fast-forward 30 years, the, the w- day-to-day world that we're living in is one in which billions of people routinely access three-dimensional spaces through rectangles on two-dimensional screens, uh, be they, you know, the screen of a laptop, you know, or a, a phone that you're holding up in front of your face, and it works really well. And one of the, the really weird aspects of it is the primitive control scheme. So most people are using, like, the WASD keys on their keyboard plus a mouse in order to navigate these worlds. Keyboards are a Victorian technology, and yet the human brain is so adaptable that even, you know, as clumsy as that is and as, as antiquated as that is, um, WASD is a perfectly, uh, useful way of navigating around in 3D spaces.
- 17:37 – 21:35
VR engineering challenges
- NSNeal Stephenson
Yeah, I'm gonna talk about VR. AR is a whole different thing, but let me just talk about VR for a sec. You know, early VR, just because of the limitations on processing power and so on, had high latency and, and other, um, kind of, uh, quality issues. And, uh, it was, I think, pretty widely believed, even as recently as maybe f- 10 years ago that, um, as latency got, got reduced and as the quality of the experience improved, that we'd see a decrease in the tendency of, of users to get motion sickness. Um, and I think that there was a decrease, but it didn't go to zero. It went to maybe, uh, the last I've heard is, like, maybe 5, 10% state-of-the-art quality VR are gonna experience some, uh, some symptoms. And in fact, I was playing a 2D video game just the other day where my friends and I turned on a new feature, and we all had to stop 'cause we were getting, we were getting motion sickness. So imagine if you were trying to popularize television in the 1950s, and you said, "We've got these great programs. We've got I Love Lucy. We've got The Ed Sullivan Show, you know, entertainment for the whole family." Uh, 5 to 10% of you are gonna end up throwing up into a wastebasket, you know, after half an hour of watching this. Um, well, that, that's a really high bar to commercial acceptance, uh, of entertainment technology. For AR, it's just a different thing. I mean, by its nature, when you're in an AR experience, it is, or it should be somehow tied to the environment you're sitting in. 'Cause if it's not, it's just VR. It's just kind of bad VR. You know, one of the most fascinating things I ever did was working, trying to make content at Magic Leap where, um, everything that we built had to, um, be aware of, in some sense, the, what was in the physical environment and be reactive to it. Um, so an incredible, uh, thing to work on. But because of that, it's, I think it's kinda different from what most people talk about when they talk about the metaverse.
- SSSteph Smith
I, I think so, too, but I also wonder with both of these, there's, there's significant engineering challenges. Obviously, they're different, right? VR introduces this idea of motion sickness, which I would definitely be part of that 5 to 10% that, that gets sick. I get sick in cars all the time. And so what I want to understand from you, though, is if we are able to solve these engineering challenges, so for example, if it becomes instead of 5 to 10%, .001% of people get sick while using a headset, are people really wanting to be that immersed, uh, if we can solve those engineering challenges?
- NSNeal Stephenson
For me, uh, if it's a good VR experience, I like going into that level of immersion for half hour, 45 minutes and having a really intense experience. Beyond that, just the experience of having this thing on my face, not being able to see my real environment, um, not being aware of what's going on, being kind of socially isolated from the people around me, adds up to, uh, s- something that for me is a, a, a relatively brief experience. Uh, like I said, half hour, 45 minutes, kinda like you might sit down and watch an episode of a TV show, you know.
- SSSteph Smith
Mm-hmm.
- NSNeal Stephenson
Then it's over, and then you stop. For all day, you know, or for gaming binges that go on for hours and hours, I don't think it's for me.
- SSSteph Smith
It's kind of hard to predict because as we're talking about these engineering challenges, it is hard to imagine how we can layer on community or social, um, prompts or how, how you actually engage with those people.
- 21:35 – 26:07
Skeuomorphism
- SSSteph Smith
Because to your point right now, if you go into VR, it is mostly an individual experience, and I think humans are naturally very social creatures. I wanna ask you a question about, uh, you can apply this to AR, to VR, or even something like a Zoom call, but something that I've noticed is that as people create these new virtual worlds, many different sorts of those v- virtual worlds, what they tend to do is apply the physical world and digitize it. So let me give you a couple examples. So if people want to create some sort of social engagement structure for work, they, like, create a digital happy hour, which is just a bunch of people in rectangles on, on a Zoom screen. Uh, similarly, if they want to create real estate within, quote, unquote, "the metaverse" or some sort of gaming engine, it looks a lot like a house in real life even though maybe you don't need a roof. There's no rain. There's no snow, right? Well, it depends what's coded into that world. But something that is important to, to note is that these digital worlds don't have or don't need to have the same structures as the physical world. And so do you think there's something that people are missing maybe in terms of the wonder, the opportunity, the ability to actually go without the constraint of the physical world, to, to get rid of gravity, to get rid of how large that world is, right? Like, a lack of, of scarcity. So do you have any thoughts there? Because something that I found very interesting about Snow Crash was that it was this vast digital world, but there were certain things. There were, like, I think there was a limit on height that people could be. But mostly, there was not the same level of restriction as we have in the physical world.
- NSNeal Stephenson
Yeah, I mean, it's gonna vary from experience to experience. I do think that almost any plausible metaverse that I can think of, there's gonna have to be some understanding around the size of avatars. Just doesn't make sense, and it doesn't work if you've got some avatars that are 100,000 times bigger than, than others. People will break that rule and, and, you know, come up with experiences where, where that rule doesn't apply. But if it's too far outside the bounds of a kind of unified experience, uh, and nobody knows what to expect, nobody understands what's going on, um, then I think, uh, you're gonna see, um- A rapid fall off of, of interest. You're, you're gonna see spaces that are, uh, appealing to, um, pretty small number of enthusiasts, um, but, uh, are less interesting or might even be actively off-putting to, um, to the, the mass audience. I mean, Tim O'Reilly has said that a good way to think of the metaverse is that it's a communications medium. Any communications medium is trying to reach the broadest possible audience. You know, that's why, that's why TV is the way it is. You know, that's why movies are the way they are. The things that you're talking about, like, um, buildings that are realistic and have roofs and ceilings, you're, you're, you're totally right that we don't need those things, you know, in, in the metaverse. But it is what people are used to, and it makes people feel comfortable to be in a space, uh, where there's a, a roof over their heads. You know, there are some, like, you know, evolutionary psychologists who've proposed that, um, early humans evolved in a savanna environment, so it's, it's got open space, open grassland where you can see for a long way, but it's got trees. Uh, they're not densely packed together, but there's sporadic trees that you can go, and you be in, be in the shade or climb up to get away from predators. Um, that's an environment that we tend to reproduce in our built environment. I think people are comforted by shelter, by y- the, the feeling of privacy that you get when there's some walls around you, there's a roof over your head. So we're gonna see those forms recapitulated in, um, metaverse experiences that are geared towards drawing in a, a mass audience. But clearly there's no, there's no limit on what you could build, what you could imagine, um, if you're, uh, if you're just trying to, um, follow your own personal aesthetic or appeal to a, a kind of a smaller, like, cult following.
- SSSteph Smith
Y- you
- 26:07 – 29:44
Commercial VR/AR applications
- SSSteph Smith
have spoken to this idea of trying to attract the masses, which I think is true to some degree with consumer applications of gaming, AR, VR. But as you mentioned, you've worked at Magic Leap for quite some time, or you, you did work there. I think you were the chief futurist or something like that, a very cool title. What did you learn there? Because they seem to have pivoted now more towards commercial enterprise. What did you learn there about the potential applications outside of maybe the consumer lens, and where some of these technologies can be applied to solve other problems?
- NSNeal Stephenson
Yeah, what I said at Magic Leap very early was that I didn't just wanna be a guru, you know, navel-gazing futurist, but I wanted to build something, and looked around for a little bit at what was going on inside the company and decided that probably the most useful place for me to apply what I know would be in content creation. And, and so there were, uh, a number of projects there, and presumably still are, that are aimed at, you know, specific industrial commercial type applications. Um, just like you said, 99% of my time was, was spent building, um, applications that were aimed at just the, the general audience and meant to be, you know, entertaining, fun in some way, uh, as opposed to the commercial industrial stuff. You do have to solve a lot of the same problems regardless of whether you're, uh, making a commercial product or a, an entertainment product. You've gotta... You're building a, um, an experience in a game engine. Um, we used both Unity and Unreal at different points. Um, the, for it to work, the game engine, the environment, the level, has to be populated not by, not just by imaginary, uh, entities that you drag into the scene, but by, um, stuff that's actually in the user's environment, uh, that the system recognizes through machine vision and kind of creates in the world. Um, so there's a, a loop that's running all the time where the cameras on the device are scanning... C- cameras and other sensors on the device are scanning the environment and trying to figure out what's what. Like, okay, there's a flat thing down there, it's probably the floor. Um, there's a flat thing over there, it's probably a wall. Uh, there's a window, there's a door. And, you know, building up from that, uh, you can make these systems more and more, um, more and more sophisticated and capable of recognizing more objects. But each one has to lead or should lead to, uh, a, a mesh, uh, an asset being put into the level that your AIs or whatever are navigating around in. So that kind of base layer of functionality is, to a large extent, built into the operating system of that device. Building on top of that, we had to kind of create our own stack that started with engineering and sort of worked its way up to, um, to creative, uh, to creative elements.
- SSSteph Smith
A lot of the work that you did towards tho- those creative endeavors for your project, how could you see those being applied to maybe some more commercial projects? I'm just
- 29:44 – 33:38
AI and gaming
- SSSteph Smith
trying to get the wheel spinning in terms of many people believing that these technologies are going to be applied to gaming, which is certainly true, and, you know, maybe even they, they might have, um, a qualm with that idea, with a lot of this technology only being applied to this idea of gaming. Uh, but I think there's a lot of potential, as we see with many technologies, for them to be applied in several ways, in ways that even the original creators didn't expect. I think one example that I've heard you give is that electricity was obvious to be applied to light, but electricity then generating electric guitar is less obvious. So- Are there perhaps less obvious things that you've been exposed to or that you've started to think through, maybe even for a future book, in terms of some of these technologies being applied i- in ways that we might not expect?
- NSNeal Stephenson
No, that's a, that's a great question. Uh, so I may have to think about it for a second. Um, you know, um, so for example, one of the, the one of the two main projects that my team worked on at Magic Leap was called Baby Goats, and it simply populated your environment with baby goats that would run around. They would jump up on the furniture and, um, and kind of interact socially, but it wasn't a game-game. It wasn't like you're not trying to score 10,000 goat points and kill the goat boss. It just was just an ambient kind of experience of these, these creatures running around. Um, and so it had to do all those things I mentioned. I mean, the, the, the goats had to know where the furniture was, and they had to know, well, okay, I can jump one meter in the air, so I can... I can't jump directly to the top of the bookcase, but I could jump to the table, and then from there I could jump to the bookcase. So the furniture would be placed, you know, by the level designer and, um, the, the possible paths that where the animal could move would be sort of pre-programmed. And so the, the animal's just making a decision to follow a certain pre-programmed path. Uh, and, and there you can use some AI there too, uh, you know, if you want. In the AR version of this, you have no way of knowing what every person's living room is gonna look like, you know? Um, and so you can't have any pre-programmed map of the room or, or plan. It's all gotta be AIs kind of, uh, hatching their own plans, uh, on their own. Um, you just push the code out into the world and hope it works. Typically, you see emergent behaviors that, uh, you might not have expected, and we're seeing this a lot with DALL-E and, um, Midjourney and, uh, other, uh, AI-based image programs where, um, uh, you know, those, those things produce some images that are probably what the designers were envisioning or imagining. But there's also just crazy results that, that come out of these things that no one ever could have predicted. In the metaverse, I think, um, we're gonna see virtual environments that are populated and brought to life by, um, by AI. In some cases, it's gonna be sort of what you might think, which is non-player characters that walk around and, you know, deliver the mail or whatever. Um, but I think we're also gonna see whole other, uh, categories of AIs being, um, being put to work, um, to create, um, experiences that have a kind of realistic texture, uh, about them and that, that make the environment seem convincing, uh, to
- 33:38 – 42:02
The value chain
- NSNeal Stephenson
the, to the user.
- SSSteph Smith
I'm glad you brought up AI because it is such an important theme, at least within the zeitgeist currently. And another important theme as it relates to the metaverse is the idea of IP. Who owns a particular object? We talked about, about interoperability before, right? Can you move that between different engines? How do you think AI will interoperate with IP, if that makes sense? How will these AIs generate a bunch of objects, maybe even generate games themselves eventually, and then who owns those things? Obviously, the AI is trained on many different data sets, so do the people who supplied that data own the eventual creation from the AI, or have you started to think about how, how that might work?
- NSNeal Stephenson
My other co-founder at Lamina1, Peter Vessnis, has actually been thinking a lot about this. He went deep down the rabbit hole of Midjourney and, and all that last month. And, and very quickly, when you're thinking about applying those kinds of systems to build, um, experiences that might make money, you're up against an ethical question for exactly the reason you said, which is that, um, these AIs are harvesting work from, um, millions of people. And, um, you know, you might ask DALL-E to make a painting of a dog in the style of... and that's fine. But when you do the same thing and you specify a living artist, then you, you can be sure that the system is going around and ingesting data from, um, uh, from everything that artist has ever created and then doing a mashup, um, to produce a, a result. And so why shouldn't... I mean, if you're just screwing around, it's one thing. In the terms of service of DALL-E, uh, I don't know about the other programs, but, you know, they're, they're pretty conscious of this, and they're, they're trying to prevent people from just, um, monetizing the crap out of it. In cases where it does get monetized, why shouldn't the, the artists who contribute, um, uh, get a cut? We've been talking to, um, Shrapnel, which is a, it's a game that's being put out by a company in Seattle called Neon Machine, and, um, it's a blockchain Web3 kind of game, uh, from the ground up. And, um, so they've been doing some interesting work in the field of smart contracts, um- That are structured in such a way as to track the provenance of a given game object, um, and, uh, and create what, what Jaron Lanier would call a value chain, uh, which is, you know, uh, a, a bunch of people one way or another contribute their time and effort to making a thing. And if that thing ends up making money, generating revenue, then, um, uh, how do you, um, how do you reward them? In the motion picture business, they have a, this lovely term called a waterfall, which is in a, in a contract for a, a movie. Uh, when revenue starts to happen, um, it cascades down and, and gets diverted off to different people, and there's a whole structure in place for this. So how do you... Is there a way to... And, and that's all, that all works, but it's notoriously slow and cumbersome. So is there a way to replace all of that machinery to create a waterfall that basically just works through smart contracts, um, and just automatically distributes, um, a revenue stream among people who contributed to a, uh, to a particular project, um, in, in varying proportions? Um, and that is actually not a bad fit for crypto. Go into a ton of detail about it, but crypto's got smart contracts that just can route money to wallets. The, kind of the whole point of a blockchain is that you can announce that, you know, at, at a particular moment this transaction happened, and everyone on that chain agrees that this is true. In the classical application of blockchain, you're just sending money to people. But, uh, in an IP-centric implementation, you could say, um, you know, I and Neal wrote a book on such and such date with a, a magic sword in it, and, um, here's what the magic sword kind of looks like. You know, maybe copy-paste some text. You know, it's about yay long, and it's sharp on one edge. And so that's an assertion that a creator could make that, that they had, um, created this idea at a certain time, but it's a hell of a long way from being a game asset that can actually be used to create an experience. And so as such, it's not capable of generating any revenue. Somebody could come along and, uh, and then link off of that stub asset, if you will, and say, "Okay, I'm gonna make an implementation of this idea. I'm gonna credit Neal for having the idea in the first place. Uh, but I'm gonna add something on top of what he's already posted on the chain, and it's, it's, uh, uh, some, uh, assets that turn this into a, uh, something you could drag into an Unreal or a Unity level." And then, um, somebody else could come along and say, "Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy that from the asset store, but it's still a long way from working in my game because I need to set up blueprints or whatever. I need to change the art direction of it so it, it's fits with my game. Um, I need to do some programming. I need to change the sound effects," you know, whatever. But it's still all part of the value chain that starts with the original asset. Um, and so, um, what the people at Shrapnel are working on is some templates for smart contracts that would sort of ease the process of, um, of creating these chains and organizing them in such a way that the, the waterfall of revenue would happen if any of it ever actually managed to make any money.
- SSSteph Smith
And I think maybe if people are listening, they might think that the description that you just gave sounds very far away, but actually it reminds me of something I saw this morning on Twitter. One of the other, uh, AI engines, you know, there's DALL-E, there's Midjourney, as you said. Another one is called Stable Diffusion. And I saw this thread this morning of a bunch of Redditors who basically were doing, were using, like, clip art or very, very simple drawings. Um, you just imagine, like, a circle, and we'll actually throw this up on the screen for people who end up watching this on video. And then they were using Stable Diffusion to basically take those and turn them into assets that looked like they were from a game. Like, really crisp, really, really high definition images of, of these, these creatures or, or whatever you might call them, these participants in a game potentially. And so this is the future, right? Is, is, is using these different engines to upgrade prior people's contributions. And I think you're right that you need to somehow articulate that value chain, because we're used to items in our homes. Like, imagine the, imagine the physical equivalent. If you had, like, a basketball and you, you said, "I have this, this machine that turns this basketball into a car," that would be wild, right? But you actually can do some of this stuff in the digital world with some of the tools that are advancing, but you do need to know the value chain, as you said, who created what, and how did that lead to the next creation, which led to the next creation, and so
- 42:02 – 46:25
Right of refusal
- SSSteph Smith
on.
- NSNeal Stephenson
So you also want a, a feedback loop that runs in the opposite direction. So, uh, somebody might come along in my example and create an implementation of, of my sword idea that I just hated. You know? Either they did the, maybe they just did a really shitty job of it, or maybe they're just a troll. Um- Who is, uh, deliberately trying to be offensive. Um, and so, um, uh, in that event, I should have some kind of right of approval. And I have to have that. You can imagine situations like, uh, if I created, let's say, an avatar that was, that looked childlike, um, it would be fine for somebody to take that and use it in a children's, uh, experience. Um, but, um, in certain other kinds of experiences that we can all imagine, sadly, it, it could be a very bad abuse of the, uh, of, of my, of, of my creative work, let's say. And so, uh, if I've created such an avatar, I need to have the ability to say, "You can't use my work in this thing that you're building." And because it's too much work to examine every possible site where something like that might be used, y- you then, you need to, to go, go up one level and, uh, you know, have kind of rating systems, let's say, uh, or, you know, some third-party evaluators that look at sites, look at experiences and say, "I don't think you want your, your IP to appear on this particular site or to be used in this, in the way it's being used."
- SSSteph Smith
That's actually fascinating to imagine because you do see the parallel of this with 2D work, right? Uh, a lot of these AIs are being trained on the whole of the internet, right? But then even prior to the AIs existing, you had many photographers, as an example, who in some cases were very protective over their work, and, and had ownership of it, and could determine where they wanted it or where they didn't want it. Um, and then you also had these, the emergence of things like Unsplash, where you had creators who said, "Actually, I'm okay with this being u- utilized by anyone, anywhere." And you'll probably see the same phenomena happen with what we're talking about. But in the case where people didn't want their work utilized in, in places that they hadn't approved of, there were these third parties. I mean, there are sites that actually go out there and scrape the internet to find images that are owned by, um, people that have copyrighted them, and then they go back to those individuals and say, "Hey, did you know that your work is being used on X, Y, and Z places?" They're a little bit, uh, like extortionists in some ways because they, they basically, like, hold the people who use them incorrectly accountable. Um, but it's fascinating to imagine that some similar approach will be needed in this world of AI as well.
- NSNeal Stephenson
And there's, you know, there's many other examples. I mean, I've, I've picked one that's kind of disturbing, but, but there's just routine g- you know, let's say that, um, that I create a piece of visual art and sell it to somebody in the expectation they're gonna hang it on their wall of their virtual home or their real home, um, or just display it, you know, you know, for their friends and, and family. Then what if they turn around and use it as the logo for, you know, um, a new brand of basketball shoe? They're using it in a way that I didn't anticipate when we set up the original deal, and it's all over the world, and, um, maybe I should get paid for that. Or, or maybe I should have the ability to say I, I don't want my, my art used in that particular way. Um, so, um, there's a whole world of IP rights and, um, licenses and so on right now is not being handled at all by the way NFT marketplaces are, are currently set up. And I think the next wave of NFTs, uh, is gonna begin to feature some of these improvements, or I think they're improvements. Some, some people, some people are gonna hate this.
- 46:25 – 51:08
Good and bad tech
- SSSteph Smith
Well, actually, I like that you brought up that you think they're improvements, other people may not think so. And I think technology's often viewed that way, right? That some people believe it's very utopian, some people believe it's dystopian. There's probably a huge spectrum where any given individual technology can actually be applied across the spectrum in positive and negative ways. And I think actually even using your books as an example, Snow Crash is more of a crudely rendered dystopian metaverse, if we're gonna use that term. Uh, another one of your books, Bit World, um, has a more utopian vibe. You could say it's more o- organic, more communal, more people building towards something, more consensus-based. I'm curious to hear from you, and feel free to loop in your new project, Lamina1, how do you think about building technology so that it is leaning more utopian? Or maybe utopian's not the right word here, but how do you, how do you d- design technology so that it can be used for good? Or is it just a reality that humans will use all technologies for good and evil, and, and that's just something that we can't avoid?
- NSNeal Stephenson
I think that is pretty much a reality, and, um, you know, people are endlessly creative in both good and bad ways, um, in how they use things. You know, Snow Crash is absolutely a dystopian novel. Um, it's also kind of making fun of dystopian novel tropes in a lot of ways. It's both a dystopian novel and a parody of dystopian novels. The technologies that are shown in it, w- with some exceptions, um, don't really have any bias for bad or good, like the, the metaverse is, um... A, a lot of what we see in the metaverse in the book is kind of, uh, garish and, and crude. Um, but, um, uh, that's just what we happen to see. It's also shown in the book that, uh, Hiro has got a beautiful home in the metaverse, kind of Japanese style home that is, um, exquisitely Rendered and, and, you know, it's a, it's a fine work of art. And Ing, the character of Ing has also got a, a, a beautiful home of his own. So another example would be Earth. So there's a app- application called Earth in Snow Crash that, you know, has a lot in common with Google Earth. It'd be silly to say that because Earth was described in a dystopian novel, that it's an inherently dark or dystopian kind of, uh, application. Um, when we look at Google Earth today, you know, uh, I think the vast majority of, uh, its applications and overlays and stuff are, uh, are for interesting creative purposes. And, um, you know, there's a few ways in which it, it can be abused. Um, but, um, but we see, we see Google kind of, I think, managing it fairly well in the sense that, you know, they, they go out of their way to blur out faces and so on, and, and try to, um, uh, prevent, um, kind of darker or less, less constructive uses of the technology. The, y- you know, there, there's not, like, built-in, um, biases towards bad or good, but, um, I do think that, um, that, that one really important bias, technological bias that, that is kind of baked in to current social media is, um, is, has to do with the revenue model. I, I, I don't think that this was, like, evil people coming up with an evil scheme. I think the, just engineers saying, "Okay, let's, let's give people more of what they react to." So, so as we all know, as we, I think we all understand now, social media platforms, um, tend to have built-in feedback loops that feed people more and more emotionally powerful, uh, content, um, regardless of, you know, whether that is constructive. And the reason that they have to do that is because that was their revenue model. I think now that we've learned that, that, um, now maybe we can avoid recreating that in the next wave of, of metaverse development, um, by, by thinking about how these experiences, uh, are, are gonna make money. What I'm hoping is that we'll end up with a revenue model that's more obvious and transparent.
- 51:08 – 54:44
Fighting “free”
- SSSteph Smith
Do you think that people will opt in to that revenue model? And I ask this because I think you're right that social can be, can be hindered by its revenue model, by its nature. I mean, just the fact, I'm sure you've heard the saying, "If you're not paying for a product, you are the product," right? And so I think maybe the awareness of that phenomena will increase over time, and maybe some people will opt in to other revenue models. But there's a reason it works. And, you know, if we use social as an example, many people gravitate towards these large social platforms because that's where you can have a platform. That's where you can reach so many people. And the masses, for the most part, have okayed this idea where they are giving up certain privacy rights, they are giving up certain aspects of their information in order to not have to pay for things. So do you actually see that reversing as people... Is it an awareness thing, or how do you actually imagine a revenue model that you can get the masses to opt into that is not an ad-based model?
- NSNeal Stephenson
It's a really tough thing to turn around, um, just because, um, it's, the, the, the attraction of free stuff is so powerful. Um, there's kind of an analogous phenomenon in games, casual mobile games, where at a certain point it just became the expectation that games would be free. Sometimes that means you have to watch ads, which is a fairly... It's annoying, but it's a transparent kind of annoyance. You, you understand how the, the, the commerce is, uh, the wheels of commerce are turning underneath that experience. But i- in other cases, it's, um, the, these games kind of become like slot machines, where they're using kind of applied, you know, behavioral psychology to make people wanna keep punching in their credit card number and spending money. The attraction of free stuff is incredibly powerful and can lead to, uh, all kinds of negative social effects. Um, and it's like, I w- I wish I had an answer. Uh, the person who I think has done the most useful thinking about this, um, has been Jaron Lanier. And, you know, we talk about this all the time. Um, he's got ideas for structures that would be analogous to labor unions, uh, where, um, you know, right now the way social media works is this, is if a bunch of people all volunteered their time to build a car, and then the car company sold the car and made money off of it, um, you know, which is pretty, it's pretty amazing that people are willing to, to do this. The idea that Jaron's working on is one in which you would join up with a bunch of other people with like-minded views of similar interests, through collective bargaining, essentially sell your data to a social media company. There's ideas out there, but, but fighting free is, fighting the, the draw and the power of free stuff is incredibly difficult.
- SSSteph Smith
Yes. I think we can all empathize with that. I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten an email that something was free, and I've wasted my time on it, and the thing that I got free was something I never even wanted. So yes, for things that you do want- Connection, community, et cetera, that you get through these applications, it's no wonder that that is a very, very tough phenomena to adjust so many people. That
- 54:44 – 1:05:26
Building Lamina1
- SSSteph Smith
brings us to your new company, Lamina1. So you are actually participating in trying to build the infrastructure that may change some of these dynamics. So from your website, it says, "Lamina1 is a new attempt at the base layer for the open met- metaverse that privileges creators, technical and artistic, one that provides support, spatial computing, and a community to support those who are building the open metaverse." Can you share a little bit more about why you're choosing to build Lamina1, and why you've made some of those really, really concrete design decisions like building on the blockchain?
- NSNeal Stephenson
So, I mean, I think I've already hinted at a lot of this in the earlier parts of this interview. Um, so a lot of what I've been talking about is all kind of rolled up into Lamina1. But, I mean, for those who don't track crypto stuff, um, the, you know, a, a layer one blockchain just means a new blockchain. Uh, it can be built using new code, new technology. Uh, in other cases it could just be a clone of an existing... a fork of an existing chain, uh, or a combination of both. Um, but the idea is that when you... If you use an existing chain and build your stuff on top of it, you're essentially going along for the ride with whoever sort of runs that, that chain. You, you don't have a say in how it's organized, uh, and what engineering characteristics it has. But if you start your own layer one chain, you, you get to control that. You get to, uh, build in the features that you want for your particular application. Bitcoin was the first layer one chain. Ethereum came along later. It's a separate, it's a separate layer one chain, but it adds features that weren't present in Bitcoin. We think that, um, that kind of the next wave, uh, is, is gonna be, uh, metaverse applications. We think that cryptocurrency and fiat currency, you know, in other words, old-fashioned non-cryptocurrency, they're both gonna be used in the metaverse just as they are in the real world, and... 'Cause they both work, and they're sort of good for different things. Um, to the extent that crypto is useful in the metaverse, um, there's s- there's different layers to it, uh, and the s- money is just the most basic layer. So having tokens that act as money and that you can, uh, send back and forth between people, use to pay for things, um, is kind of the, the, the most basic, uh, functionality that you can have in a, a chain. Um, smart contracts then are sort of built on top of that, and there's various knobs that you can turn to optimize a chain to, to carry out specific functions. Um, we think that for some of the reasons that I was mentioning, um, having to do with, um, how content creators, uh, can get paid to build experiences, that, um, there's an opportunity to make a, a new layer one chain that, um, that works for them and that's integrated with the, the tool sets that they are in the habit of using, so that they don't have to go out and become crypto experts and learn all kinds of new, um, capabilities just in order to do their jobs. Making things good for those people, for those experience creators, is the key to having a successful metaverse because, um, nobody's gonna go and use the metaverse unless there are experiences there that they enjoy having. People who know how to make those experiences right now, by and large, work in the game industry, um, and they're good at using game engines and the tool chains that feed assets into those game engines. If we can find ways to, um, uh, integrate, um, the, the financial infrastructure that they need to get paid into the tool chains that they're already using, uh, then we like to think that that'll bring in, um, content creators, make them happy, create experiences in the metaverse, uh, that lots of people enjoy having and are willing to, to pay for. So that's kind of the, that's kind of the plan, in a nutshell.
- SSSteph Smith
That makes sense to me, and I think, you know, whether you're in the metaverse or otherwise, every company out there is trying to attract top talent. And yeah, so if you can, if you can acquiesce them towards your ecosystem, then you likely will win. But when it comes to the incentives to drive creators to participate using Lamina1 or otherwise, how do you think about that? Because many of these ecosystems will, for example, say, "Oh, we'll give creators this percent cut in order to develop within our metaverse or another metaverse." How does Lamina1 layer into that? How aware is the creator, the end creator? How do they know whether they're using Lamina1 or the gaming engines that you mentioned? How do those all kind of interplay together? Is Lamina1 almost like a transparent layer under these existing engines, or, or can you share a little bit more about how that might work?
- NSNeal Stephenson
I'm not sure if I would say transparent, 'cause that suggests invisible. And so kind of to your point, people should know what they're using and why they're using it, uh, how they're getting paid. So, um, you know, anyone who is trying to make a buck, you know, and support themselves financially has gotta be mindful of where the money's coming from and how the business, you know, operates. A lot of times the, the interfaces that you have to use in order to do anything at all with crypto, even pretty simple things, uh, are- Hard to work with and confusing and almost, almost a little frightening 'cause you're, you're sort of aware at some level that if you do it wrong, you know, you could lose money
- SSSteph Smith
Yes. Your wallet gets wiped, et cetera.
- NSNeal Stephenson
We're certainly fans of making it easy and, and, uh, accessible without having to learn a bunch of new stuff. I think it'd be a mistake to have it be so transparent and so invisible that people don't even know what's, what's happening. That's, you know, uh, there, there needs to be, um, you know, that needs to be very frank and, and, and obvious and, and upfront to, to creators. Um, and I, I don't think that creators would accept anything other than that because, again, th- this is how they're gonna get paid. This is how they're gonna make money, and so it needs to be, uh, it needs to be out there where they can see it.
- SSSteph Smith
How are you forging these partnerships with the gaming engines as well? Because I assume that if these creators are building on top of existing ecosystems, and you're building a protocol that, in theory, interoperates with them, how are you actually building those relationships, or are these gaming engines super open to integrating with Lamina1? I'm less familiar whether these APIs are already open, but, uh, yeah, tell me a little bit more about that.
- NSNeal Stephenson
Yeah. So, I mean, the two big ones are Unity and Unreal, and, you know, people make plugins, uh, for those all the time that, um... I think Unreal is available source. It's not open source. That's got a particularly legal meaning, but, but you can download the source and compile from source anytime you want, which means you can add whatever you want. And, um, uh, in, in the... I'm less familiar with, with Unity, but they've all got scripting capabilities and, and ways that you can add on to the, the engine. So, um, the, you know, at the moment, um, most of the big players in the, uh, the game industry are, uh, are being avoidant of crypto and, and blockchain. Um, and, um, there's, there's different reasons for that, um, y- you know, um, having to do with, um, um, you know, they, they may perceive a risk to their brand, um, or they may, they may, uh, see that, um, just, uh, the, the, there could be a lot of, of headaches administratively, um, trying to change their business model to one in which, you know, lots of real money was being handled by their, their customers. Um, so at the moment, um, they're taking a hands-off approach, and in some cases it's, it's pretty, it's, you know, it's pretty in your face. Like Minecraft, uh, you know, made a pretty strong statement just a couple weeks ago about, um, not wanting to have crypto stuff going on in their, their platform. Um, so, um, um, but at some level, I think, y- you know, when you talk to, uh, people in the game industry, whether it's individual developers or people working in, in, in larger companies, um, uh, I think there's, uh, an, an awareness, um, that this is coming, uh, and that it could be an important thing, uh, for their businesses and their, their companies in the future if it could just be sort of... If we can get past the early kind of Wild West era, you know, and the kind of initial, uh, sort of teething issues and, uh, out of the prototype stage, if you will, you know, and, and, uh, in- into a, a place that just feels more, uh, more stable.
- SSSteph Smith
And also, once you start to partner with some of them, if you are able to attract that talent, the best creators, then it'll become potentially inevitable for the others to want to partner and open up to that ecosystem because they will be following the talent.
- NSNeal Stephenson
Yeah, it could be. I mean, you know, it's like I said, I think that people will happily continue using fiat currency and traditional payment schemes for a long time 'cause, you know, they work. We... From where I sit, I just think that there are some specific things that we could do with a, a new chain, um, that, uh, that could be valuable, uh, for people in this space.
- 1:05:26 – 1:11:48
Neal’s design designs
- SSSteph Smith
And I know you've talked about them to some level already, but what are those specifics? Are there a few things that you think just don't exist within the existing infrastructure that Lamina1 is looking to fix?
- NSNeal Stephenson
Well, the, the big one is, I think, the, the notion of value chains. I went into some detail about that before, so I won't rehash it. But, um, existing payment systems, um, can be really cumbersome. You know, if I hire someone in another country to make a skin for me in Roblox, you know, and, and pay them some money for that, well, you know, does that mean I need to 1099 them? Do I need to fill out, you know, paperwork in, y- you know, in some other country to, you know, make sure that, uh, everything's properly squared away? In a kind of 20th century or 19th century economy, it was okay to, for, you know, if you're a large company, you just put up with that burden of paperwork. But, you know, in an internet economy where there's constant transactions happening all over the place, you want something that's a little more fluid. Um, and I think, uh, cryptocurrency can, can definitely provide that. Likewise, um, you know, I, I described the way, uh, contracts work and waterfalls work in the entertainment industry. The Hollywood legal industry is something that you- Cannot believe until you've seen it, uh, just the size of it and the number of people who, who work there and, um, the complexity of the structures that are created and managed. Um, and um, [clears throat] just the number of minds that spend their days working on this, this stuff. So if all you're doing is punching out a few blockbuster movies a- and, um, handling the, the revenues from those, then that's a manageable situation. And it works, you know. I mean, lots of people are not happy with how it works, but it, it totally works. People are making money. Movies are getting made. But creating complicated experiences in a, a virtual world, um, is not gonna be like that. Um, it's, it, it's not all stovepiped into specific, you know, big budget projects. It's assets going every which way and appearing in different places. Um, and so trying to track all of that and, uh, make, make it work as a business using conventional Hollywood legal and accounting procedures just doesn't sound realistic to me.
- SSSteph Smith
It won't work.
- NSNeal Stephenson
Um, doing it with a new chain that's optimized to, to handle those kinds of transactions, I think seems like a reasonable idea.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah, I think so too. I think another design decision that you made with Lamina1, which seems to be not adjacent to the things that you, you just discussed, is also to make the chain carbon neutral. Can you speak to why that design decision was made?
- NSNeal Stephenson
I mean, we started talking about this pro- Lamina1 just a few months after I published a novel, Termination Shock, which is all about global climate change. So it would seem weird for me to publish that novel and then a few months later announce a, uh, a chain project that's gonna be putting carbon into the atmosphere. Now, there's a, a, again, for people who are not crypto dorks, I should explain that old school Bitcoin uses, um, a, a, a system, underlying system called proof of work, which relies on solving complicated math problems that inevitably consume a lot of energy. And so it is terrible from, uh, an energy standpoint or from a carbon footprint standpoint. Newer chains, by and large, are going to a completely different system called proof of stake, which is orders of magnitude more efficient. So on a modern chain, it uses proof of stake. Uh, if you're using this for, uh, kind of routine transactions, the carbon footprint really is no worse than, so what you're already doing anyway, if you drive your car around or turn on your air conditioner or, you know, take a plane flight. In proof of stake systems, which Lamina1 will be, it's, it's not that bad, but it, it, it doesn't matter. You're still at some level responsible for putting some carbon into the atmosphere. So, um, the, um... What we're gonna do is, um, is design the system, and this is one of these things that you, you have the power to do if you do a layer one chain as opposed to piggybacking on somebody else's chain. The, the, the system's gonna be designed in such a way that in order to participate, to operate a node, you need to demonstrate that you've, um, acquired, you've bought a certain number of carbon credits, um, from a legitimate company. And that's a whole topic unto itself because there's a lot of different companies out there pushing a lot of different carbon credit schemes, and, um, some are more legit than others. Uh, so there's actually multiple ratings agencies now that all they do is look at these systems and try to figure out which ones are good. So that's, you know, it, it gets a little complicated on that level. Um, but we're gonna do that 'cause it's the right thing to do, and, um, and we're, we're pursuing more far out sort of, uh, ideas related to carbon sequestration, uh, that are too early to, to talk about. But it's on a separate organizational track from Lamina1 'cause it's still kind of in the gonzo probably won't work phase.
- SSSteph Smith
We're actually doing an episode on carbon removal, so very interested in this space and glad that you're pursuing it as well.
- 1:11:48 – 1:18:21
Inspiration for Snow Crash
- SSSteph Smith
I wanna dovetail this into the final section, which I would be remiss not to ask you about, which is just how you think about the future. And we talked earlier about this idea of the metaverse being coined 30 years ago. Just to put that into perspective, that's actually before I was born. And so I, I, I'm very impressed as I, I read Snow Crash, just to even get my mind around this idea that you were able to come up with these terms. But more than that, to imagine a future where we are immersed. I mean, this is like when we had dial-up internet or even before that, right? And so that's impressive, but you've also done this across a myriad of your books, right? So, so you've been involved in kind of the early stages of fintech, and we've talked about crypto. You've now written a book, Termination Shock, about carbon removal and what's going on with climate change. And so I know this is a broad question, but where do you get these ideas from? Where do you actually synthesize the seeds of, of these books when they're so far before- What many other people come to see in reality
- NSNeal Stephenson
A lot of times it's because I've got some contact with, with the actual technology that's being described. So in the case of Snow Crash, that emerged from a project I had been working on for a couple years previously in computer graphics where I was writing code, a lot of code. Um, I was trying to push hardware to do things it wasn't quite ready to do yet. Um, and it got me thinking about, um, about the future of that, you know, 3D graphics as a medium. And having that kind of direct involvement sort of helps in two ways. One is just give you some ideas, but also it helps, uh, because you're, um, you're exposed to some of the specifics of how the, the system works, and so that produces ideas for, for plot devices, let's say. In the case of, um, Termination Shock, we've got someone who's launching sulfur into the, the stratosphere, um, to do geoengineering. If you sit down and actually kind of run the numbers on what it would take to do that, you know, it's a, it's kind of an interesting engineering problem unto itself. And by, um, by, by thinking through some of the, the engineering details, um, you, you can come up with, with ideas, um, that, uh, uh, that if you were just kind of freestyling might not occur to you.
- SSSteph Smith
I wanna ask you about one particular example 'cause I found it fascinating. I've been lucky enough to work remotely for I think around seven years now. Um, so I felt like I was before my time. Now many people are doing this. One of my favorite quotes that I found in Snow Crash, uh, is Hiro basically saying that, um, a particular video game job was managed by the Nipponese, which means that all of the programmers have to wear white T-shirts and show up at 8:00 in the morning and sit in cubicles and go to meetings. And I just reflected on that and I thought, again, this was written in the early '90s, um, as something that was not the focus of the book at all, but another one of these hints towards where the world was going. So using that as an example, like where did that inspiration come from? What did you notice at that time when you were writing Snow Crash that, um, maybe many other people did not see?
- NSNeal Stephenson
'70s, '80s was a period of time during which, um, so, so the Japanese economic miracle happened. Um, so in the, the oil shock of 1974, suddenly people started buying smaller cars. They started... And the Japanese car industry just went through the roof and became really valuable. And so people became kind of, uh, fascinated by their management approach. Um, and so, you know, you see these, these documentaries about the factory workers showing up at a certain time and doing calisthenics, you know, before they, um, before they went to work. So that was on people's minds, you know, in the, the '70s and the '80s. Um, in my particular case, because of the project that I described to you, um, I ended up working alone from home for a couple of years. I mean, I was a writer to begin with, but, but also just the, the coding project that I was working on was, um, just me alone doing all of it. Um, and so, um, and it was also the... I, I wasn't the only person kind of operating in that mode because this was still the era of kind of the lone hacker who could, um, uh, single-handedly produce, you know, a gigantic, uh, system that actually worked. But you could see that that era was coming to an end. We're heading in a direction where ind- the individual lone hacker, uh, won't be able to, to, to keep up with, with large organizations pretty soon. And so for me, from a storytelling point of view, that gives me a few elements that, uh, it's just immediately obvious to me at that point that this is a really powerful combination of, of elements that I can use to define my character. So he can be one of the lone genius hacker who's really good at that. Um, he specifically sees himself in contrast to the kind of regimented style of a certain kind of workplace, uh, which wouldn't ever work for him. Um, and yet he knows at some level that, uh, this is all gonna change and that he's, he's headed for the scrap heap of, of history. So in his, on his business card, Hiro identifies himself as the last of the freelance hackers. You know, he's the last of this breed, and these are all very romantic ideas. They're tropes from literature and storytelling that are, um, known to be effective and, um, not original to me, but, but sort of combining them in that particular way made it possible, I think, to, um, uh, to, to do kind of a new twist on an old story.
- SSSteph Smith
Your answer was, was more complex than I was expecting,
- 1:18:21 – 1:21:45
Looking ahead from 2022
- SSSteph Smith
but also that even though the book was written in the '90s, you were looking decades before that at themes that had emerged leading up to that. And so I'm curious-
- NSNeal Stephenson
It was written in the '80s.
- SSSteph Smith
Oh, okay.
- NSNeal Stephenson
It was written in, like, '89.
- SSSteph Smith
But published in the '90s, is that right?
- NSNeal Stephenson
Yeah. I mean, I started working on it in '88, '89, wrote it in 1990-ish. Um, and then it just takes a while for the book to go through the whole pipeline. So '92, I think, is when it finally came out. But it is very much a work of the late '80s.
- SSSteph Smith
And you, you just wrote Termination Shock. You've written tons of books. I'm curious to know from the perspective of 2022 What are some of the clues that you're looking at? What are some of the themes that you're noticing about today that you think might be really important clues about, let's say, the next 30 years?
- NSNeal Stephenson
Yeah. Well, to me, the two most important things that, uh, are carbon and, um, and the polarization of, of society. Um, and, and the way that polarization is being fostered and kind of weaponized by, by bad actors who, who benefit, you know, from that, that polarization. And, you know, so those are both things that we've talked about during this interview. Um, the, um... And as I said before, like, I kinda don't know what the answer is on polarization. I mean, uh, there's a lot of people thinking about this and writing about it now, and writing some really good stuff. Um, I was just talking the other day to Anne Applebaum, who's wr- written the book called The Twilight of Democracy, uh, that's on these themes. Um, [lips smack] a really great book describing her personal experience with growing polarization. Um, and, uh, and we met... Anne and I met when we were helping Jonathan Rauch launch his book, The, the, uh, Constitution of Knowledge, which is also about all this. So there's all kinds of really smart, uh, very well-informed people thinking about this and writing great stuff about it. But, you know, I think what's missing is, um, a solution. [lips smack] Um, like, like, at the end of the day, when you ask these people, "Okay, what are we gonna do? How are we gonna fix it?" Um, no one's got a silver bullet or anything close to it. I am thinking a lot about the other problem I mentioned, the equally big problem of, of carbon, and, um, and I know, I know a lot about that at the moment, um, i- if I do say so myself, that and, and geoengineering. Um, so, um, I mean, I kind of rolled directly from a book about geoengineering into thinking a lot about, uh, carbon capture and sequestration. Um, so that's an area where I think the science fiction writer mind can get a little more traction because you can think about it on an engineering and science level.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah, I, I think the, the topic of carbon removal is, is really fascinating, and I wanna ask you one or two questions about that.
- 1:21:45 – 1:23:36
Science fiction writing
- SSSteph Smith
But something that I've reflected on as I thought through all of the books that you've written about, and also just the genre of science fiction, is I wonder whether science fiction becomes reality much more quickly due to the exponential nature of technology, as in over time. Where if you were to take a book from the '90s, the evolution of that or aspects of that entering our reality maybe took a couple decades. And whether, because again, r- the technologies that we engage with tend to be exponential in nature, and also the number of people engaging with those technologies tend to come online in an exponential way as well, whether that timeline is decreased. Do you have any thoughts around that, whether, whether that might be true?
- NSNeal Stephenson
I think it's not just that it's decreased, but that it's swapped around, and so now science fiction is trailing behind. Like, things are happening faster than, uh, science fiction can really anticipate them, at least in kind of digital... When you're talking about big engineering rockets and spaceships and that kind of thing, science fiction is still way ahead of, of reality just 'cause it takes longer to implement those ideas. Um, but trying to stay ahead of developments in the internet, uh, online, any of that, is kind of a hopeless task. And a lot of science fiction writers besides me have, uh, have talked about the, the fact that, um, no matter how much they try to stay on top of current trends and be creative and try to think ahead, that, uh, by the time they can actually write a book and get it published, everything they've written has already happened.
- SSSteph Smith
I, I wonder when the first AI-written book will top the New York Times bestseller list. I, I wouldn't be surprised if, if that happens within my lifetime certainly.
- 1:23:36 – 1:28:36
Carbon removal
- SSSteph Smith
But returning back to the idea of carbon removal, let's just close out on this topic because it's something that interests you. It's, it's certainly an area of opportunity. As I mentioned, we'll be doing a separate episode on it. But given that you've dived so deeply into this arena, what would you say are some of the most exciting, maybe more optimistic things that you've learnt? Or maybe certain companies that you're seeing attack this problem that you think are really exciting.
- NSNeal Stephenson
I'm, uh, excited by Terraform Industries, which is a company in Southern California. Uh, it was founded by a friend of mine named Casey Handmer, who's a physics PhD who was, uh, i- in space, working in space, you know, JPL and that kind of thing, but decided to address this, this issue. And they are developing, uh, a system for using photovoltaics, uh, to extract carbon from the atmosphere and, and turn them into synthetic fuels. Net zero carbon exchange because, you know, you're, you're pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, you're selling fuel which gets burned in an airplane engine or whatever and puts the carbon back in. But, uh, still, uh, a big improvement on sucking it out of the ground and adding, adding new carbon. You know, we've all gotten kind of conditioned to think that any time you're using energy, it's bad and you should, you should- feel bad and you should curtail your use of energy. Um, that's only true really if it's, uh, energy produced by b- burning fossil fuels. Energy from renewable sources, and particularly photovoltaics, um, you know, isn't hurting anyone. And, uh, the cost of making photovoltaics is, is coming down. It's come down a lot already and is still going down. So, so I think where we end up is in a, a situation where, um, we're using energy from those kinds of sources to, um, to get carbon out of the atmosphere and keep it out of the atmosphere. For me, that's an optimistic trend that I hope will continue.
- SSSteph Smith
I hope it doesn't come to a billionaire having to operate unilaterally and release a bunch of sulfur into the atmosphere, which is the premise of Termination Shock.
- NSNeal Stephenson
I mean, I suspect that that will happen. Um, I suspect it'll be done by a, some country, not, not by a, a, a lone billionaire. Lone billionaire makes for a better novel. Country is a more realistic possibility. But when you look at the, the threat posed by, you know, so-called wet bulb disasters, um, where the temperature and humidity become so high that humans cannot survive, we could see very large fatality numbers, um, in certain parts of the world. So why wouldn't, why wouldn't such a country wanna put some sulfur into the stratosphere to, to cool things down? You know, it's a tourniquet. It's, it's like, it's the emergency thing that you do on your way to the emergency room to, to get a, to, to get a real cure, and the real cure is, is gonna be carbon removal.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't solve the problem. It is a Band-Aid until you remove the carbon from the atmosphere. Well, Neal, I wanna say thank you for taking so much time throughout this interview. I think you've inspired a bunch of people with your work, but also, I think it's extremely important to note that you are a builder in this space. You have been for many years, whether it was at Blue Origin, Magic Leap, now with Lamina1, and I think many people are excited to see what Lamina1 brings to the space, whether it really can build a better ecosystem for creators, whether we can use some of these design decisions to make a more interoperable, more fair, more equitable ecosystem for the people participating within it. So yeah, I just wanna say thank you again, um, for taking the time here.
- NSNeal Stephenson
Well, it's been my pleasure. I really enjoyed the interview and, you know, thanks for, thanks for being so well prepared and, uh, uh, asking good questions.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. I can only hope that maybe one day we get to play with your GOAT AR application.
- NSNeal Stephenson
Yeah.
- SSSteph Smith
Is that ever appearing in, in, in the world?
- NSNeal Stephenson
It, uh, it, it ended up getting kind of turned into demo code for, for Magic Leap. So y- y- its real value for the company was to, um, provide a, a sample app basically, and some documentation that other developers could, could use to make their own applications. But, um, I don't see why you couldn't have them running around in a virtual space.
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs] Well, hopefully we'll get to experience that one day. Thanks again, Neal. [upbeat music] Thanks for listening to the a16z podcast. If you like this episode, don't forget to subscribe here on YouTube to get our exclusive video content. We'll see you next time.
Episode duration: 1:28:46
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Transcript of episode 60u9L5-YO9Q
