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’s 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’s 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’s 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’s media fragmentation is trending us towards dystopia, why the Apollo moon landings were communism’s greatest triumph, whether we’re 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.
Follow Neal on Twitter
Follow Tyler on Twitter
More CWT goodness:
Barkha Dutt on the Nuances of Indian Life
Marc Andreessen on Learning to Love the Humanities
Jamal Greene on Reconceiving Rights
Tyler and Daniel Gross Talk Talent
Chris Blattman on War and Centralized Power
Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality
Roy Foster on Ireland’s Many Unmade Futures
Lydia Davis on Language and Literature
Sam Bankman-Fried on Arbitrage and Altruism
Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present
Sebastian Mallaby on Venture Capital
Stewart Brand on Starting Things and Staying Curious
Russ Roberts on Israel and Life as an Immigrant
Ana Vidović on Prodigies, Performance, and Perseverance
Conversations with Tyler 2021 Retrospective
Ray Dalio on Investing, Management, and the Changing World Order
Ruth Scurr on the Art of Biography
David Rubenstein on Private Equity, Public Art, and Philanthropy
David Salle on the Experience of Art
Stanley McChrystal on the Military, Leadership, and Risk
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Navigating Life After 40
Teaching Learning Leading K-12
Regenerative Skills
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
The Mel Robbins Podcast