Long before Facebook became Meta, a novel predicted our digital future. In this episode of Cabinet of Science and Fiction, we dive into Neal Stephenson's cyberpunk masterpiece, "Snow Crash." We'll explore the world that gave us the terms "Metaverse" and "avatar," and examine its startlingly prescient vision of a fractured society seeking escape in a sprawling virtual reality.

But how does Stephenson's 1992 dystopia hold up today? We'll dissect the novel's core themes—corporate sovereignty, data privacy, and virtual inequality—and see how they map onto the technological and ethical challenges of our current push toward a real-world Metaverse. We'll also look at the aspects Stephenson himself admits he didn't foresee, including the specific revenue models driving modern social polarization.

Finally, we go beyond the fiction to explore Stephenson's real-world project, Lamina1. This blockchain-based initiative aims to correct course, seeking to build the open, creator-centric, and interoperable Metaverse he originally envisioned. Join us as we separate the prophecy from the practice, and ask if we can still build a better future than the one fiction foretold.

Spoiler Alert ⚠️ —key plot revelations may lie ahead in this episode.

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