The DeanBeat: The intersection of sci-fi, video games, and real-world tech

Video game designer Will Wright was fond of saying that a dog-eared copy of Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash was the business plan for many Silicon Valley startups. That novel’s vision of the Metaverse inspired technologies such as the Second Life virtual world and the Xbox Live online gaming service. Ken Kutaragi, father of the PlayStation, also cited The Matrix as an inspiration for the PlayStation 2 video game console.

Science fiction, video games, and real-world technology have always been intertwined in a way that I find to be fascinating. It is why I spend a lot of my time looking at all three of those things (see my list of the top 25 tech movies of all time), and I believe that lot of geeks do as well. I’m very interested in the intersection of these things, and it’s one reason I’d like to start organizing some roundtables that could bring the talent in these areas together and inspire each other. If you’ve got a suggestion for a way to build an event around these intersections, let me know.