zlacker

He was definitely onto something in that book where people also resort to using blockchains to fingerprint their behavior and build an unbreakable chain of authenticity. Later in that book that is used to authorize the hardware access of the deceased and uploaded individuals.

A bit far out there in terms of plot but the notion of authenticating based on a multitude of factors and fingerprints is not that strange. We've already started doing that. It's just that we currently still consume a lot of unsigned content from all sorts of unreliable/untrustworthy sources.

Fake news stops being a thing as soon as you stop doing that. Having people sign off on and vouch for content needs to start becoming a thing. I might see Joe Biden saying stuff in a video on Youtube. But how do I know if that's real or not?

With deep fakes already happening, that's no longer an academic question. The answer is that you can't know. Unless people sign the content. Like Joe Biden, any journalists involved, etc. You might still not know 100% it is real but you can know whether relevant people signed off on it or not and then simply ignore any unsigned content from non reputable sources. Reputations are something we can track using signatures, blockchains, and other solutions.

Interesting with Neal Stephenson that he presents a problem and a possible solution in that book.

>>jilles+(OP)
> blockchains to fingerprint their behavior and build an unbreakable chain of authenticity. Later in that book that is used to authorize the hardware access of the deceased and uploaded individuals.

maybe I misunderstood, but I had it that people used generative AI models that would transform the media they produced. The generated content can be uniquely identified, but the creator (or creators) retains anonymity. Later these generative AI models morphed into a form of identity since they could be accurately and uniquely identified.

>>dirkc+Gm
All part of the mix. But definitely some blockchain thing underneath to tie it all together. Stephenson was writing about crypto currencies as early as the nineties. Around the time he also coined the term Metaverse.

>>jilles+(OP)
As usual, Stephenson is at his best when he's taking current trends and extrapolating them to almost absurd extremes...until about a decade passes and you realize they weren't that extreme after all.

I loved that he extended the concept of identity as an individualized pattern of events and activities to the real world: the innovation of face masks with seemingly random but unique patterns to foil facial recognition systems but still create a unique identity.

Like you say, the story itself had horrible flaws (I'm still not sure if I liked it in its totality, and I'm a Stephenson fan since reading Snow Crash on release in '92), but still had fascinating and thought provoking content.