Neal Stephenson on History, Spycraft, and American-Soviet Parallels | Conversations with Tyler

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.

Recorded October 9th, 2024

Transcript and links: https://conversationswithtyler.com/ep...

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Chapters
00:00 - On the future and illustrating the past
03:58 - On the psychological makeup of spies
09:33 - On the logistics of faking one’s own death
14:18 - On Soviet communism
30:19 - On augmented reality
39:39 - On AI