Tag: neal]
Neal Stephenson Believes AI-Generated Creative Output Is ‘Simply Not Interesting’
“I think it depends on how it’s used,” Stephenson told CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover” on Friday. “What we’ve tended to see is that it’s used in creative applications where I don’t think it’s at all interesting.”
Stephenson said that with a painting or book, “what you’re doing is having a kind of communion with the artist who made thousands of little micro decisions in the course of creating that work of art or writing that book.” A decision that is generated by an algorithm, “that’s simply not interesting,” he said….
“Personally, I know a lot of writers who are putting a lot of effort into creating their own original works, and I’d rather support them and hear what they have to say than just look at the output of an algorithm,” he said.
When asked if an AI could’ve written Snow Crash, Stephenson responded “Well, maybe one did.”
But if that were the case, he added, a person would be reading only the output of an algorithm, “and if that’s interesting to you, then fine.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Neal Stephenson Celebrates ‘Snow Crash’ 30th Anniversary by Auctioning Sword with NFT, Manuscripts
“The sword took us a year to create and is one of the finest pieces of craftsmanship WETA has created,” said Sir Richard Taylor, founder of WETA workshop. “The whole collection is then housed in a crate from a fictitious gaming company that in theory has owned this sword that has now come up for auction. It is an insane, inworld fusion of ancient craft with the digital age.” Taylor adds that “the swords Tansu storage case itself is an, automated, internally driven, magnetically activated, very unique box, with hidden compartments, secret items, coded messages and other inworld special nods to the world Neal authored.”
This auction will not only celebrate Stephenson’s legacy and the lore of Snow Crash but could also serve as a springboard to expand the Snow Crash universe further. [Taylor adds that Stephenson is exploring “future transmedia developments”.] For Taylor, they are at the cusp of creating a body of creative work that blurs the line between the physical and the digital, which we have been affectionately calling ‘Masterworks for the Metaverse’.
The sword will, of course, have its own unique NFT “capturing every detail of its physical twin,” and someone’s already bid $60,000 for it.
Also up for auction are two original manuscripts for Snow Crash and the painting used as the original edition’s cover art — but also two forgotten artifacts from the book’s afterlife:
“The only surviving materials from the original graphic novel concept for Snow Crash titled Dioxin Posse, ca. 1989”
“The leather jacket meant to be worn by Y.T. in the original graphic novel concept for Snow Crash, featuring the ‘Elmo’ logo used by her group, the “Dioxin Posse,” ca. 1989.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Why Neal Stephenson is trying to make the open metaverse into a reality
The metaverse has been trending for a couple of years as humanity’s answer to the pandemic and remote work. Neal Stephenson, the author of the science fiction novel Snow Crash and cofounder of blockchain tech firm Lamina1, is the high priest of this metaverse religion, as he coined the term “metaverse.” And after 30 years […]