Metaverse Perverse: Why the Metaverse Didn't Happen (Mike Lorrey)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Paraverse Perverse or Why the Metaverse Didn't Happen

The metaverse described in Snow Crash is a much higher fidelity, much higher resolution (see Juanita's commentary on facial nonverbal communication via the 'vapor of nuance') than the sorts of virtual reality in implementation today. Its existence depended upon the telecom companies solving the problem of 'the last mile': providing a super-high bandwidth data pipeline into every household, such that every person can interact in the Metaverse to a degree of fidelity that non-verbal communication is possible. Some folks are anamored of cable internet service these days and think that is the sort of bandwidth Neal Stephenson was expecting. Nope, that was what L. Bob Rife started out with, but by the time of the events of Snow Crash, fiber optic is the name of the game: gigabits per second of bandwidth available for the asking.

Did they solve it? They wanted to, and got the job half done. Why didn't they finish? It can all be blamed on one regulation, the Telecommunications Reform Act.

At the time that the events of Cryptonomicon were set, companies like Enron, Global Crossing, and Worldcom (gee, why do those names sound familiar) were frantically laying transoceanic and transcontinental cable systems, making massive bandwidth available to every major national telecom system, and investing many billions of dollars in the work. Why were they doing so? Because all the telecoms were talking about solving 'the last mile', putting in fiber optic to everyone's doorstep.

If the last mile didn't materialize, then there would be no huge consumer demand for massive bandwidth laden applications: anything using VRML on a massive scale, with large and highly secure implementations of encrypted data processing, would need this stuff: the Metaverse, for instance, and truly secure, anonymous, untaxable, electronic currency.

Some might say that Stephenson's story in Time Magazine, The Great Simoleon Caper is what scared the bajeezus out of the powers that be with regard to taxes. The idea that government was rapidly becoming obsolete, would lose the ability to collect taxes when secure e-cash became available, was gaining broad currency in the mid-1990's. Anarchists like Hakim Bey predicted the imminent demise of the monolithic state due to technology.

In the government, you had the Clintons, for all their Fleetwood Mac hipness, they were defenders of the New Deal big government establishment. Hillary Clinton's senior thesis in college remains under lock and key to this day for its reported advocacy of final implementation of the nanny state here in the US.

The Clintons were treating anyone with any sense of individualism as a threat to national security: hundreds of law abiding private citizens had their FBI files taken by Clinton operatives, the BATFE was let loose upon the gun owning citizenry, the "I did not inhale" President put more self-medicating American citizens in prison in 8 years than the rest of the 20th century combined, and many hundreds of thousands of Americans saw their property seized by out of control government agents without a trial, who colluded with registrars of deeds to unconstitutionally convert lein notices into leins without proper process.

That government needed more money, to finance nationalized health care and the saving of the spotted owls. Even the Republicans fell under the big government spell, refusing to fulfill their term limits pledges, refusing to implement the Contract with America, and alienating themselves from Grover Norquists agenda to "shrink government down small enough to drag it into the bathroom and strangle in the tub."

All those politicos were looking at the third rail: Social Security. "Can't touch that third rail," they said. Problem is, Social Security is headed to an early grave, and would have gotten there earlier if we'd had anything to do with it. The big parties have been ignoring the impending SS insolvency since I was a kid. They ignored it when Pete DuPont and Steve Forbes warned them about it, outside of upping payroll taxes. The idea of ending it, privatizing it, was anathema to those drunk with power.

In short, the last mile had to be stopped. Had to keep that tax money rolling in. Neal Stephenson scared the crap out of them. The idea of winding up like Greg Ritchie, the US President in Snow Crash that nobody recognised, was too much to bear, particularly for an egomaniac like Bill Clinton. So, what to do about it? Well, the last mile is being put in by for-profit corporations (those damn greedy evil corporations).

How about we make it unprofitable to do so? "Easy", "Great Idea!" they beamed. How do we do that? What they did was, in the guise of a "competition protecting", "consumer protecting" measure, Congress amended the bill so that it required any telcom that installed fiber optic to a persons home had to allow their competitor ISPs access to that customer for less than the cost of installing the fiber. It required telcoms to take a loss on each and every fiber they ran to a persons home. The Telcoms said, okay, screw you, ain't happening, we won't do it then. The bill passed with the broad support of the cable television industry, and THAT is how the Metaverse never happened.

The fallout was that Enron, WorldCom, and Global Crossing were hung out to dry with billions of dollars of backbone capacity they couldn't sell for pennies on the dollar. Those companies went tits up, their employees and stockholders lost everything, and absolutely nobody in government or the mainstream media is admitting to what really went on while they go through the motions of prosecuting Ken Lay, Fastow, and the other stooges who got goat-roped by the powers that be.

Since then, the government has had the time to catch up technologically and legally. They've implemented under the rubrick of the Patriot Act measures enabling them to spy on any person without their knowledge. It requires that all citizens must divulge every cryptographic key they posess. It allows the government to hack into any computer, anywhere, any time, immune to any damage they cause. All children are automatically issued social security numbers at birth, and no person can hold a bank account without a social security number, even people with a religious objection to the inventorying of human flesh.

The Metaverse didn't happen, and I think it is partly our fault, for yapping too much about how great the world of Snow Crash would be, warning the statists to wake the hell up and start ruling again.