 | The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline .(December 2020) |
"The Great Simoleon Caper" is a short story by Neal Stephenson that appeared in TIME on March 1, 1995. [1] It deals with concepts familiar to Stephenson's readers: encryption, digital currency, and distributed republics. It appears to be set in a United States that precedes the events in Stephenson's novel Snow Crash (1992), using an early version of his Metaverse.
In the story, the protagonist is an underemployed mathematician who resides in the house of his brother's family in Chicago. The brother, owner of an advertising agency, has won a large contract to create ads for "Simoleons", a form of non-governmental electronic "currency". To launch the product, they plan to give away 27 million Simoleons to the winners of a contest. The contest is based on the long-used format of "guess the number of jelly beans in the container", with Chicago's Soldier Field and 26 other football stadiums as the containers.
The brother asks the mathematician ("the hero") to do the calculations needed. The hero complies with the request, using the calculator function of the family's advanced set-top box to speed the long math. Sometime later, while taking a rest break from his online job in the Metaverse, the hero is contacted by a representative of a group of "crypto-anarchists" who have formed a virtual nation called the First Distributed Republic. The FDR warns the hero that the government, which fears E-money, has stolen his calculations by compelling the cable company to tap the family's set-top box. The government plans to give the answers to a group of planted people, who will then proceed to ruin the reputation of Simoleons through various disinformation schemes.
The hero has no actual worry about this, except that his parents are heavily invested in his brother's advertising agency; as the agency would be liable for the loss of security on a project they have contracted for, the agency would go bankrupt, and their parents would lose their money. The FDR, on the other hand, wish to prove that not only would E-money work, but that it can circumvent government controls such as taxes. Together, the hero and the FDR create a simple scheme to foil the plot.
Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque.
Cryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson, set in two different time periods. One group of characters are World War II-era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park (UK), and disillusioned Axis military and intelligence figures. The second narrative is set in the late 1990s, with characters that are descendants of those of the earlier time period, who employ cryptologic, telecom, and computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency, with a long-term objective to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare.
Snow Crash is a science fiction novel by the American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's novels, it covers history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy.
The Emergency Banking Act (EBA), Public Law 73-1, 48 Stat. 1, was an act passed by the United States Congress in March 1933 in an attempt to stabilize the banking system.
Digital gold currency is a form of electronic money based on mass units of gold. It is a kind of representative money, like a US paper gold certificate at the time that these were exchangeable for gold on demand. The typical unit of account for such currency is linked to grams or troy ounces of gold, although other units such as the gold dinar are sometimes used. DGCs are backed by gold through unallocated or allocated gold storage.
The Baroque Cycle is a series of novels by American writer Neal Stephenson. It was published in three volumes containing eight books in 2003 and 2004. The story follows the adventures of a sizable cast of characters living amidst some of the central events of the late 17th and early 18th centuries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Central America. Despite featuring a literary treatment consistent with historical fiction, Stephenson has characterized the work as science fiction, because of the presence of some anomalous occurrences and the work's particular emphasis on themes relating to science and technology. The sciences of cryptology and numismatics feature heavily in the series, as they do in some of Stephenson's other works.
"Jipi and the Paranoid Chip" is a science fiction short story by Neal Stephenson that appeared in Forbes magazine's July 7, 1997 issue. It is part of the Baroque Cycle/Cryptonomicon universe.
Digital currency is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital currencies include cryptocurrency, virtual currency and central bank digital currency. Digital currency may be recorded on a distributed database on the internet, a centralized electronic computer database owned by a company or bank, within digital files or even on a stored-value card.
In futurism and science fiction, the metaverse is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. In colloquial use, a metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.
"The Great Money Caper" is the seventh episode of the twelfth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on December 10, 2000. In the episode, Homer, along with his son Bart, con people out of their money in order to pay for Homer's broken car. However, after having paid for the repairs, the two decide to continue grifting, which leads to some troublesome situations.
Thiruda Thiruda is a 1993 Indian Tamil-language black comedy caper film directed by Mani Ratnam written along with Ram Gopal Varma. The film stars Prashanth, Anand, Anu Aggarwal and Heera Rajagopal while S. P. Balasubrahmanyam and Salim Ghouse play supporting roles. The film's soundtrack and background score were composed by A. R. Rahman while the cinematography was handled by P. C. Sriram. In 1994, the film premièred at the Toronto International Film Festival. It also won the National Film Award for Best Special Effects.
Virtual currency, or virtual money, is a digital currency that is largely unregulated and issued and usually controlled by its developers and used and accepted electronically among the members of a specific virtual community. In 2014, the European Banking Authority defined virtual currency as "a digital representation of value that is neither issued by a central bank or a public authority, nor necessarily attached to a fiat currency, but is accepted by natural or legal persons as a means of payment and can be transferred, stored or traded electronically." A digital currency issued by a central bank is referred to as a central bank digital currency.
Presidential elections were held in Mali on 29 April 2007. Incumbent president Amadou Toumani Touré ran for re-election against seven other candidates and won in the first round with about 71% of the vote.
The Kazakhstan Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The exchange was founded in 1993.
Hyperinflation in early Soviet Russia connotes a seven-year period of uncontrollable spiraling inflation in the early Soviet Union, running from the earliest days of the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917 to the reestablishment of the gold standard with the introduction of the chervonets as part of the New Economic Policy. The inflationary crisis effectively ended in March 1924 with the introduction of the so-called "gold ruble" as the country's standard currency.
In computer science, a cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency that does not rely on any central authority to uphold or maintain it. Instead, transaction and ownership data is stored in a digital ledger using distributed ledger technology, typically a blockchain. However, when a cryptocurrency is issued by a single issuer or minted or created prior to issuance, it is generally considered centralized.
The first 100 days of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency began on March 4, 1933, the day Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States. He had signaled his intention to move with unprecedented speed to address the problems facing the nation in his inaugural address, declaring: "I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require." Roosevelt's specific priorities at the outset of his presidency were getting Americans back to work, protecting their savings and creating prosperity, providing relief for the sick and elderly, and getting industry and agriculture back on their feet.
Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing is a collection of short fiction and nonfiction by the speculative fiction author Neal Stephenson. It is primarily composed of Stephenson's previously published articles, essays, and interviews although it does contain a previously unpublished essay titled "Arsebestos" and an unfinished short story "Under-Constable Proudfoot."
Termination Shock is a science fiction novel by American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 2021. The book is set in a near-future Earth where climate change has significantly altered human society, and follows the attempts of a solar geoengineering scheme. The novel focuses on the geopolitical and social consequences of the rogue fix for climate change, themes common in the growing climate fiction genre.
Colored Coins is an open-source protocol built on the Bitcoin 2.0 that allows users to represent and manipulate immutable digital resources on top of Bitcoin transactions. They are a class of methods for representing and maintaining real-world assets on the Bitcoin blockchain, which may be used to establish asset ownership. Colored coins are bitcoins with a mark on them that specifies what they may be used for. Colored coins are also considered the initial step toward NFTs built on top of the Bitcoin network.
 | This article about a science fiction short story (or stories) published in the 1990s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |