This is just a bizarre argument on multiple levels. (1) Snow Crash is a pretty late arrival in terms of fictional portrayals of virtual networked spaces, a decade after Vernor Vinge’s “Other Plane” & 8 years after Gibson’s “Cyberspace”.
https://twitter.com/EvanSelinger/status/1422204915192156161
(2) The fictional “metaverses” are jazzed up sci-fi versions of actual MUDs that were emerging around the same time, and which most people don’t consider “dystopian.” (3) Fictional cyberspaces were dystopian to the extent *the cyberpunk genre* was dystopian.
(4) Successful scifi is, you know, usually about tech going wrong in some dramatic way. Utopias are boring. That’s why Star Trek isn’t set on Earth with everyone celebrating post-scarcity life in the Federation.
Aliens in old sci-fi are usually hostile invaders, and AI goes rogue & decides to conquer the world… because that’s what makes for an interesting story, not because sci-fi authors had prophetic insight into what real aliens or real AI would probably be like.
Also this. The REAL WORLD of “Snow Crash” is a sort of gonzo dystopia; his Metaverse seems relatively benign by comparison, albeit not without its own problems and pathologies.
https://twitter.com/neil_chilson/status/1422276916405538816
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