Neal Stephenson Quote
It's ironic that Juanita has come into this place in a low-tech, black-and-whiteavatar. She was the one who figured out a way to make avatars show somethingclose to real emotion. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten, because she didmost of her work when they were together, and whenever an avatar looks surprisedor angry or passionate in the Metaverse, he sees an echo of himself or Juanita -- the Adam and Eve of the Metaverse. Makes it hard to forget.Shortly after Juanita and Da5id got divorced, The Black Sun really took off.And once they got done counting their money, marketing the spinoffs, soaking upthe adulation of others in the hacker community, they all came to therealization that what made this place a success was not the collision-avoidancealgorithms or the bouncer daemons or any of that other stuff. It was Juanita'sfaces. Just ask the businessmen in the Nipponese Quadrant. They come here totalk turkey with suits from around the world, and they consider it just as goodas a face-to-face. They more or less ignore what is being said -- a lot getslost in translation, after all. They pay attention to the facial expressionsand body language of the people they are talking to. And that's how they knowwhat's going on inside a person's head-by condensing fact from the vapor ofnuance.Juanita refused to analyze this process, insisted that it was somethingineffable, something you couldn't explain with words. A radical, rosary-totingCatholic, she has no problem with that kind of thing. But the bitheads didn'tlike it. Said it was irrational mysticism. So she quit and took a job withsome Nipponese company. They don't have any problem with irrational mysticismas long as it makes money.But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore. Partly, she's pissed at Da5idand the other hackers who never appreciated her work. But she has also decidedthat the whole thing is bogus. That no matter how good it is, the Metaverse isdistorting the way people talk to each other, and she wants no such distortionin her relationships.
It's ironic that Juanita has come into this place in a low-tech, black-and-whiteavatar. She was the one who figured out a way to make avatars show somethingclose to real emotion. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten, because she didmost of her work when they were together, and whenever an avatar looks surprisedor angry or passionate in the Metaverse, he sees an echo of himself or Juanita -- the Adam and Eve of the Metaverse. Makes it hard to forget.Shortly after Juanita and Da5id got divorced, The Black Sun really took off.And once they got done counting their money, marketing the spinoffs, soaking upthe adulation of others in the hacker community, they all came to therealization that what made this place a success was not the collision-avoidancealgorithms or the bouncer daemons or any of that other stuff. It was Juanita'sfaces. Just ask the businessmen in the Nipponese Quadrant. They come here totalk turkey with suits from around the world, and they consider it just as goodas a face-to-face. They more or less ignore what is being said -- a lot getslost in translation, after all. They pay attention to the facial expressionsand body language of the people they are talking to. And that's how they knowwhat's going on inside a person's head-by condensing fact from the vapor ofnuance.Juanita refused to analyze this process, insisted that it was somethingineffable, something you couldn't explain with words. A radical, rosary-totingCatholic, she has no problem with that kind of thing. But the bitheads didn'tlike it. Said it was irrational mysticism. So she quit and took a job withsome Nipponese company. They don't have any problem with irrational mysticismas long as it makes money.But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore. Partly, she's pissed at Da5idand the other hackers who never appreciated her work. But she has also decidedthat the whole thing is bogus. That no matter how good it is, the Metaverse isdistorting the way people talk to each other, and she wants no such distortionin her relationships.