Neal Stephenson on History, Spycraft, and American-Soviet Parallels

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Neal Stephenson’s ability to illuminate complex, future-focused ideas in ways that both provoke thought and spark wonder has established him as one of the most innovative thinkers in literature today. Yet his new novel, Polostan, revisits the Soviet era with a twist, shifting his focus from the speculative technologies of tomorrow to the historical currents of the 1930s.

In Neal's second appearance, Tyler asks him why he sometimes shifts from envisioning the future to illustrating the past, the rise of history autodidacts, the implications of leaked secrets from the atomic age to today’s AI, the logistics of faking one’s death, why he still drafts novels in longhand, Soviet idealism among Western intellectuals, which Soviet achievements he admires, the lag in AR development, how LLMs might boost AR, whether social media is increasingly giving way to private group chats, his continuing influence on technologists, why AI-generated art might struggle to connect with readers, the primer from The Diamond Age in light of today’s LLMs, the prospect of AGI becoming an unnoticed background tool, what Neal believes the world really needs more of, what lies ahead in Polostan and the broader “Bomb Light” series, and more

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded October 9th, 2024.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,
0:09.4	bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.
0:13.5	Learn more at Mercadis.org.
0:15.7	For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links,
0:20.4	visit Conversationswithtyler.com.
0:26.5	Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
0:30.1	This is my second conversation with Neil Stevenson, who needs no introduction, but do
0:35.7	let me tell you about Neil's new book, Polistan, which I read
0:39.6	an advanced copy of. It's a very different kind of book. I wasn't sure what to expect,
0:44.2	but I very much liked it. And the real test of this is, when the book ends, are you sad that it
0:50.1	wasn't longer? And I was sad that it wasn't longer, and I will be pre-ordering parts two,
0:55.0	three, and whatever else comes. Neil, welcome.
0:58.3	Good to be back.
0:59.8	How is it that you think about why you sometimes switch from showing us the future to illustrating
1:05.3	the past?
1:06.4	You know, for me, it's a continuum. All of my science fictiony books have had callbacks to historical themes, some more than
1:17.5	others.
1:18.6	So to me, I've always enjoyed history.
1:21.7	I've had the opportunity to write historical fiction.
1:25.7	I've greatly enjoyed it.
1:30.5	It's been a while since I went there. It was like going home almost, you know, being able to go back and work in a historical setting again.
1:35.8	Sometimes I think that when the present and future are changing most rapidly, that's when we need
	...

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