Neal Stephenson Named “Chief Futurist” at Magic Leap

Novelist Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver, Snow Crash) has announced that he will join the hot and mysterious tech startup, Magic Leap. From NPR:

Stephenson announced that he will be joining the startup Magic Leap as the company's "chief futurist." While the company itself remains something of a mystery, the Wall Street Journal reports that "the startup is developing its own eyeglasses-like device, different from Google Glass, designed to project computer-generated images over a real-life setting." In other words, the technology is said to try to blend seamlessly what's real with what's virtual—not unlike some of the technologies in Stephenson's book.

Though the company has yet to produce anything, Google and several other tech titans have been big backers of the project, to the tune of $542 million in investments.

“I'm fascinated by the science, but not qualified to work on it,” Stephenson wrote in a post on the Magic Leap blog. “Where I hope I can be of use is in thinking about what to do with this tech once it is available to the general public.”