Snow Crash and The Near Future

A while ago I was muttering about how things that used to look far in the future are now looking closer and closer. Mars, the deep sea, advances in computers and technology that we looked at in movies are suddenly much, much closer to reality.

In the car I’ve been listening to an audiobook of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and near the beginning there is a long explanation about how one of the things that made The Metaverse such a usable place was the facial expressions that were programmed into the avatars used by people communicating. Tonight on TV they had something (I only saw the teaser for this, as it was coming up, film at 11) on pprogrammers creating realistic facial animations to help people communicate through video phones. Or at least that’s what it sounded like.

Anyway, just one more example on how the future is now!