Podcasts Education Self-Improvement Conversations with Tyler Neal Stephenson on Depictions of Reality

Neal Stephenson on Depictions of Reality

Published: July 17, 2019, noon

If you want to speculate on the development of tech, no one has a better brain to pick than Neal Stephenson. Across more than a dozen books, he\u2019s created vast story worlds driven by futuristic technologies that have both prophesied and even provoked real-world progress in crypto, social networks, and the creation of the web itself. Though Stephenson insists he\u2019s more often wrong than right, his technical sharpness has even led to a half-joking suggestion that he might be Satoshi Nakamoto, the shadowy creator of bitcoin. His latest novel, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, involves a more literal sort of brain-picking, exploring what might happen when digitized brains can find a second existence in a virtual afterlife.

So what\u2019s the implicit theology of a simulated world? Might we be living in one, and does it even matter? Stephenson joins Tyler to discuss the book and more, including the future of physical surveillance, how clothing will evolve, the kind of freedom you could expect on a Mars colony, whether today\u2019s media fragmentation is trending us towards dystopia, why the Apollo moon landings were communism\u2019s greatest triumph, whether we\u2019re in a permanent secular innovation starvation, Leibniz as a philosopher, Dickens and Heinlein as writers, and what storytelling has to do with giving good driving directions.

Read a\xa0full transcript\xa0enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded June 14th, 2019

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