Like any place in Reality, the Street is subject to development. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off of the main one. They can build buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as vast hovering overhead light shows and special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the idea that reality is not fixed and can be shaped by imagination and innovation.
Neal Stephenson's quote reflects on the concept of reality as a malleable landscape, where individuals or 'developers' can create unique spaces and experiences that extend beyond traditional confines. It encourages thinking about how creativity and technology can transform our environments, allowing for the construction of elements that challenge our perceptions of time and space, effectively blurring the lines between the real and the imagined.
In practice
In a discussion about virtual reality experiences, this quote can illustrate how technology allows us to construct new realities.
For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.
Humans needed water or they would die, but dirty water killed as surely as thirst. You had to boil it before you drank it. This culture around tea was a way of tiptoeing along the knife edge between those two ways of dying.
Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code.
It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.
Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing—is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference?
I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there." There might as well be, "Arsibalt said, "but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators.
Once upon a time men were possessed by devils. Now they are not less obsessed by ideas
It was a wine jar when the molding began: as the wheel runs round why does it turn out a water pitcher?
You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.
When you deprive people of their right to live in dignity, to hope for a better future, to have control over their lives, when you deprive them of that choice, then you expect them to fight for these rights.
If a company has acted badly, people want to punish it - not in order to deter future misconduct, but simply because they're outraged. And the more outraged they are, the more punishment they want to inflict.
I'm not good at finding 'encouraging' features in American culture. I doubt that aesthetic literacy has much of a future here.
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