Sometimes the reader will decide something else than the author's intent; this is certainly true of attempts to empirically decipher reality.

We're all living on borrowed time. The trick is to come up with works of sufficient interest to pay off the debt.

If I were to write Web now, it would be a much, much darker book.

We're not lost. We're locationally challenged

At one point I intended to write precursor and sequel novels, about the establishment of the Web and its next evolution, but I am very unlikely to now; they would take place in a different universe.

Well, it's an adventure story, and a Bildungsroman, of course, but there was also the intention to describe a culture that had been seen in rather narrow terms.

Creating the fictional background for a game world isn't significantly different from creating a background for fiction.