Zuckerberg's Trip to Washington was Classic Sci-Fi

I stopped reading science fiction when I turned 17. I thought reading history would give me better insights into the future. The trouble with sci-fi is that it always predicts 10 out of the next three technological innovations. The future is never as weird in reality as it is in sci-fi.

Yet there was a flaw in my strategy. If the future is actually being made by sci-fi readers, ignorance of that genre may be a fatal blind-spot.

A couple of weeks ago I had dinner in San Francisco with a bright young crypto crowd. Crypto is short for cryptocurrency, which is the best-known use for blockchain or distributed-ledger technology. The most famous cryptocurrency is bitcoin. Crypto is the cool thing these days. The cool people who were at Facebook when it was cool are now into crypto.

Steering the conversation away from blockchain and toward my uncool comfort zone, I asked if crypto people still read books. Yes, of course, but mostly science fiction. Such as? Well, obviously, “Snow Crash," my host replied.

I'd never heard of “Snow Crash," because it was published in 1992, long after I kicked the sci-fi habit. It turns out that the novel — by Neal Stephenson — was once required reading for new Facebook recruits. I've now read it. So should you. And so should all those senators and representatives who last week wasted two days asking Mark Zuckerberg questions that were either easy for him to answer or easy for him to duck.