Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"Generally, the human race avoids doing anything radical until forced into it."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Avatar Construction Set | ||
| A collection of software that allows the building of a complete avatar. |
In the real world, you have choices about your appearance, but you are limited by your real height and weight (among other characteristics).
In the virtual world, the Metaverse, the appearance of your avatar can vary as much as you like.
| The Ports serve a function analogous to airports: This is where you drop into the Metaverse from somewhere else. Once you have materialized in a Port, you can walk down the Street or hop on the monorail or whatever. The couples coming off the monorail can't afford to have custom avatars made and don't know how to write their own. They have to buy off-the-shelf avatars. One of the girls has a pretty nice one. It would be considered quite the fashion statement among the K-Tel set. Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own, customized model out of miscellaneous parts. It might even look something like its owner.
Her date doesn't look half bad himself. The other girl is a Brandy. Her date is a Clint. Brandy and Clint are both popular, off-the-shelf models. When white trash high school girls are going on a date in the Metaverse, they invariably run down to the computer-games section of the local Wal-Mart and buy a copy of Brandy. The user can select three breast sizes: improbable, impossible, and ludicrous. Brandy has a limited repertoire of facial expressions: cute and pouty; cute and sultry; perky and interested; smiling and receptive; cute and spacy. Her eyelashes are half an inch long, and the software isso cheap that they are rendered as solid ebony chips. When a Brandy flutters her eyelashes, you can almost feel the breeze. Clint is just the male counterpart of Brandy. He is craggy and handsome and has an extremely limited range of facial expressions. |
| From Snow Crash,
by Neal Stephenson. Published by Bantam in 1992 Additional resources -
|
Thanks to Jonathan Bearce who reminded me about this one - and provided the text quote.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Snow Crash
More Ideas
and Technology by Neal Stephenson
Tech news articles related to Snow Crash
Tech news articles related to works by Neal Stephenson
| Dim The Sun With Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment |
| Tiny LEDs Developed For Dust-Sized Computers |
| Seabreacher, H.G. Winter's 1939 Torpoon |
| Project Soli Radar Gesture Chip Now FCC Approved |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
'I enjoy watching this way, but - He waved his hand and the circuit switched abruptly.'
SF writers popularized and elaborated on this idea a generation before the first patents were filed.
'The autopilot would need data before it could begin a translation...'
'Sealed to the ground along all the sides, Honey, he growled...'
'Those twin volcanoes; d'ye see them, Mr. Renner?'
'...a towering eighty-story structure like the office In-and Out baskets stacked up to the sky.'
'Machines that seemingly with full consciousness walked out into the fields to do their daily work.'
