The research paper "Mind Viruses: Self-Propagating Ideas in Multi-Agent LLM Systems" by the Anthropic team describes a threat of self-propagating instructions in natural language within agentic systems. This concept mirrors the "mind virus" described in Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel "Snow Crash".
The novel depicts a futuristic society where the US territory is divided into autonomous enclaves called "franchise-states" with their own laws, police, and currencies. In this world, the US federal government has become a mere market participant, while corporate franchises provide citizenship as a product.
The novel also introduces the concept of the Metaverse, a black sphere with a radius of over 10,000 km, and a Street that is approximately 100 m wide and 65,536 km long. Social status in this virtual world is determined by the texture resolution of avatars, which serves as a dress code.
Neal Stephenson, the author of the author of the novel, later became the chairman of the board of directors for Lamina1, a layer-1 blockchain project aimed at creating an open metaverse where creators retain ownership of digital objects. The project was launched in May 2024, and its L1 token was listed on exchanges in November 2024.
However, the project ended in failure. On July 17, 2026, the team announced the closure of the project due to a lack of funding. This outcome reflects the novel's theme that any sufficiently complex information system will eventually be infected by viruses produced by itself.
