WEEK 11: Cyberpunk and Steam Punk | Snow Crash Response
This week I read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. This story combines the power of cults, religion, and technology which made for a very thrilling story. At first, I found this book a little confusing to follow. Stephenson deals with lots of complex concepts and expounds in depth on these ideas while maintaining the book's very fast-paced plot.
This story is very innovative in a sense that in the world of Snow Crash, everyone lives by codes that they create for themselves and anyone can do anything they want. While this cyber planet is meant to be set deep into the future, I feel there are some bizarre similarities that are recognizable to our world today. The way people talk "cyber" such as referring to things as an avatar, virus, and daemon. Also the idea that our brains are like hardware and our ideas are like a software. Today we are already talking like our brains are computers and that the more technology can control us, the smarter we become. This thought is scary because it's not just a thought, it's actually happening. We are inserting microchips within our bodies and using identification systems, which sometimes we don't even realize are identifying us.
-Abigail
It's interesting that you call the similarities between our modern day society and the society in Snow Crash "bizarre." I think it's nearly a given that these novels share many of these ideas, as the future presented in Snow Crash is extrapolated from our present day. You are certainly right in saying it's a scary thought, though. Seeing a possible, perhaps inevitable, negative outcome of our current actions always is.
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