It may not be surprising that many scientists have been influenced by science fiction – for instance, Arthur C. Clarke influenced pioneers of artificial intelligence research and the developers of the World Wide Web. I didn’t realize that Snow Crash had such a powerful influence on the development of several technologies, especially virtual worlds:
The most obvious sign of Snow Crash’s influence is Linden Labs’ Second Life. While Linden founder Philip Rosedale claims that his creation predates Snow Crash, he’s admitted that reading the novel helped crystallise ideas. “When Snow Crash came out, I was already really intent on the idea of creating a virtual world like Second Life,” Rosedale told the New York Times in 2007. “But Snow Crash certainly painted a compelling picture of what such a virtual world could look like in the near future, and I found that inspiring.”
Despite this, and the fact that chapters of the novel were made available within Second Life, Stephenson himself has always played down the link. “I have nothing negative to say about it,” Stephenson said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, before explaining that “every hour I spend in a virtual reality is an hour I’m not spending reading Dickens or visiting Tuscany”.
In addition to Second Life, Snow Crash was cited as an influence by the teams who created Google Earth as well as Xbox Live. Interestingly, most of the technology predicted by the novel were well realized fifteen years after its publication. The problem with writing science fiction today? Technology is moving so fast that authors are finding their predictions for the future are coming true soon after publication:
As Stross told PC Pro: “Back in 2005 I began writing a novel, Halting State, about the future of MMOs and the gaming industry. It came out in 2007, and was set about a decade out – around 2018. I made some predictions, thinking that in ten years they’d either be laughable or they’d have come true. The weird bit? Most of them came true already, by 2009!”