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novabird's review against another edition
4.0
“Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code.”
Neil Stephenson is a brilliant code maker. He was playing in the field of gods when he conceptualized a world that was created by software Gods or God-programmers. Stephenson almost makes this human origin plausible because he invests so much energy and action into his writing. Stephenson replaces memes and genes with codes and viruses, great imaginative alternative reality take on evolutionary theory. Snow Crash is incredibly entertaining reading, even with somewhat outdated technology.
Stephenson likens viral ideas to the effect of memes:
“We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.”
A meme (/ˈmiːm/ meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[by whom?][2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
For making think about neurolingusitics again and the power of the speech act 4.25 It loses .25 because in chapters 56 and 57, Stephenson has Hiro expound and explicate his language/program theory to the big players of Uncle Enzo, Ng, and Mr. Lee who as his captive audience simply ask him timely questions.
3mmers's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson gets my vote for most surprising book of the quarter, in a good way. This book rules.
I didn’t expect it to be a mostly astute social commentary. I didn’t expect it to have great characters. I definitely didn’t expect it to be funny as hell.
Snow Crash has been adopted as the touchstone of just the most annoying dudes on the internet. ‘The Metaverse’ was, for a time, the Next Big Thing. The next innovation that would make the internet immeasurably more annoying and expensive for its regular users but would allow techbros to move money around in a way that they would assure us was definitely good.
At best, I was expecting Sword Art Online, a potentially interesting idea in practise quite dull, and at worst the corporate dick-sucking of Ready Player One or ninth circle of capitalist hell of Decentraland and the other wasteoids branding themselves as blockchain metaverses.
Oh me of little faith. Snow Crash beats ass.
Obviously this book has stuck around because it is super prescient about the ways in which people would one day use the Internet. Snow Crash was written in the paleolitic era of the early 90s but its online future will be very familiar to the 21st century man. A few programmers who when from college students experimenting with niche tech to super wealthy off of being the first nerds in the space, is where most of today’s richest men came from. The default avatars, that’s just how Fortnite (not to mention any number of online social experiences) works. A 3D continuous metaverse is probably never going to be in the cards, but a real world dominated by chain businesses designed to extract profit from even those activities we might hope are removed from capitalism? We’re already there.
Of course, Stephenson couldn’t predict everything. And the things he ended up being wrong about are honestly even funnier than the things he got right. One thing he didn’t foresee was the ubiquity of smartphones, so in the world of Snow Crash using the Internet while on the go is the event horizon separating normies from the irrecoverably geeky. Less funny as in haha and funny as in strange is the way the narrative treats programmers as a group. The programmer is a unique species innocent of the travails of the regular adult, like a unicorn or perhaps a bird of paradise. When they get rich it’s mostly by accident and it doesn’t really change much about them other than the quality of booze at the parties. They’re compelled by curiosity to solve technological problems but don’t have any of the venal motivations that cause social ones. They’re easily manipulated into doing destructive things, but aren’t ever bad in and of themselves. As a result the metaverse is a reprieve form the the corporate platforms that have come to dominate the real world. While there is money and exclusivity in the metaverse, it is also infinite and free to access, which means there is theoretically space for everyone.
It’s a native and kinda sweet perspective, and easy to miss with Snow Crash’s otherwise insane plot, but it did stick with me. It’s a very programmer kind of a way to think.
The plot mystery is also ultimately a very programmer way to think. When all you are is a coder, you tend to see everything as being reducible to code. This bothers me specifically because my background is history of science and, to make a long story short, we tend to see it as quite the opposite. Humans are not like code or computers because computers and code reflect some fundamental logic of the universe or whatever. Rather, comparing our brains to our technologies has been a continual historical cycle. Before computers it was watches, and if we hadn’t invented the computer, we would have imagined our minds as whatever other technology we did invent. The iron-clad certainty of stem-majors that they’re unique positioned to understand the universe.No, Mr. Stephenson, that’s not what the code of Hammurabi means. Ultimately though, this is a me problem. If Snow Crash think’s it is making a deep philosophical point then I don’t agree. Take the code-magic the same way you took the pizza delivering Mafia and you’ll be better for it.
Snow Crash’s most unusual feature is how it pre-dates the interminable modern discourse on representation in media. Most of the characters read like a bad faith hyperbole of a character with too many identities to be plausible, because of woke. A catholic Latina female programmer? An indigenous nuclear biker merc? A teen girl skateboard courier? A mixed race Black Japanese samurai coder? L. Ron Hubbard? What’s next? Pronouns??
It’s refreshing for this to be justified by little more that rule of cool. The characters’ backgrounds are important — Juanita’s Mexican catholic background informs her ideas about identity and selfhood, which is how she is able to solve the plot, Raven’s backstory is that he wants to nuke America as revenge for genocide and colonialism — but they’re there because it makes the book more interesting, not because of woke. Whatever that is supposed to mean. It reveals the whole ‘forced diversity makes stories worse’ for what it is, a shitty and ahistorical argument reverse engineered to defend a poorly understood reaction to Captain Marvel movies. Forced diversity was not a problem in 1992. Diversity was included because it was cool and interesting. One wonders what stories would exist if we extended this grace to racialized authors in addition to white ones.
Ultimately, Snow Crash is great like a theme park ride. There are bright lights and big thrills, but if you insist on looking behind the scenery, there’s less there than you’d expect. Insubstantiality doesn’t make the show any less impressive. I’ve got to hand it to the tech bros on this one; even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
I didn’t expect it to be a mostly astute social commentary. I didn’t expect it to have great characters. I definitely didn’t expect it to be funny as hell.
Snow Crash has been adopted as the touchstone of just the most annoying dudes on the internet. ‘The Metaverse’ was, for a time, the Next Big Thing. The next innovation that would make the internet immeasurably more annoying and expensive for its regular users but would allow techbros to move money around in a way that they would assure us was definitely good.
At best, I was expecting Sword Art Online, a potentially interesting idea in practise quite dull, and at worst the corporate dick-sucking of Ready Player One or ninth circle of capitalist hell of Decentraland and the other wasteoids branding themselves as blockchain metaverses.
Oh me of little faith. Snow Crash beats ass.
Obviously this book has stuck around because it is super prescient about the ways in which people would one day use the Internet. Snow Crash was written in the paleolitic era of the early 90s but its online future will be very familiar to the 21st century man. A few programmers who when from college students experimenting with niche tech to super wealthy off of being the first nerds in the space, is where most of today’s richest men came from. The default avatars, that’s just how Fortnite (not to mention any number of online social experiences) works. A 3D continuous metaverse is probably never going to be in the cards, but a real world dominated by chain businesses designed to extract profit from even those activities we might hope are removed from capitalism? We’re already there.
Of course, Stephenson couldn’t predict everything. And the things he ended up being wrong about are honestly even funnier than the things he got right. One thing he didn’t foresee was the ubiquity of smartphones, so in the world of Snow Crash using the Internet while on the go is the event horizon separating normies from the irrecoverably geeky. Less funny as in haha and funny as in strange is the way the narrative treats programmers as a group. The programmer is a unique species innocent of the travails of the regular adult, like a unicorn or perhaps a bird of paradise. When they get rich it’s mostly by accident and it doesn’t really change much about them other than the quality of booze at the parties. They’re compelled by curiosity to solve technological problems but don’t have any of the venal motivations that cause social ones. They’re easily manipulated into doing destructive things, but aren’t ever bad in and of themselves. As a result the metaverse is a reprieve form the the corporate platforms that have come to dominate the real world. While there is money and exclusivity in the metaverse, it is also infinite and free to access, which means there is theoretically space for everyone.
It’s a native and kinda sweet perspective, and easy to miss with Snow Crash’s otherwise insane plot, but it did stick with me. It’s a very programmer kind of a way to think.
The plot mystery is also ultimately a very programmer way to think. When all you are is a coder, you tend to see everything as being reducible to code. This bothers me specifically because my background is history of science and, to make a long story short, we tend to see it as quite the opposite. Humans are not like code or computers because computers and code reflect some fundamental logic of the universe or whatever. Rather, comparing our brains to our technologies has been a continual historical cycle. Before computers it was watches, and if we hadn’t invented the computer, we would have imagined our minds as whatever other technology we did invent. The iron-clad certainty of stem-majors that they’re unique positioned to understand the universe.
Snow Crash’s most unusual feature is how it pre-dates the interminable modern discourse on representation in media. Most of the characters read like a bad faith hyperbole of a character with too many identities to be plausible, because of woke. A catholic Latina female programmer? An indigenous nuclear biker merc? A teen girl skateboard courier? A mixed race Black Japanese samurai coder? L. Ron Hubbard? What’s next? Pronouns??
It’s refreshing for this to be justified by little more that rule of cool. The characters’ backgrounds are important — Juanita’s Mexican catholic background informs her ideas about identity and selfhood, which is how she is able to solve the plot, Raven’s backstory is that he wants to nuke America as revenge for genocide and colonialism — but they’re there because it makes the book more interesting, not because of woke. Whatever that is supposed to mean. It reveals the whole ‘forced diversity makes stories worse’ for what it is, a shitty and ahistorical argument reverse engineered to defend a poorly understood reaction to Captain Marvel movies. Forced diversity was not a problem in 1992. Diversity was included because it was cool and interesting. One wonders what stories would exist if we extended this grace to racialized authors in addition to white ones.
Ultimately, Snow Crash is great like a theme park ride. There are bright lights and big thrills, but if you insist on looking behind the scenery, there’s less there than you’d expect. Insubstantiality doesn’t make the show any less impressive. I’ve got to hand it to the tech bros on this one; even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship
fbroom's review against another edition
1.0
I just didn't care for the prose or the characters. I hate the geeky nerdy main character type who is smarter and better than anyone else in the world
rjfrost's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
goobearmilltato's review against another edition
3.0
Wow, Stephenson sure likes to pack in the information, doesn't he? I was impressed with just how much he crammed in this book, and how he put it all together in the story. Still, sometimes it felt like I was studying for a college course. Most of the time it was interesting enough, though, which is why I gave this a 3. As my first Neal Stephenson book, however, it kind of turned me off from all of his other 1000+ page books.
whiffer's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
veganheathen's review against another edition
3.0
The first half of this book was great and really interesting. Once I got into the middle, though, it was like the brakes engaged and the story turned slower, a bit dry and a little dull. I feel like this book could have been edited down to be a bit shorter, with a lot of the Enki and Asherah stuff condensed. It was interesting, but a bit heavy. I also felt like the ending wasn't really all that satisfying and was quite chaotic and predictable.
I had heard about how great this book is for years and I was slightly disappointed. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either.
I had heard about how great this book is for years and I was slightly disappointed. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either.
lauriewdc's review against another edition
3.0
This was an interesting and quick read. However, I could have done without the sex scene with a 15-year old girl. Gross.
socialbrad's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
aconnors12's review against another edition
2.0
***Did Not Finish***
Didn’t know what I was expecting from a book about the Metaverse from the 90s. I thought maybe I’d give it a shot. Maybe it would be nice to see what someone thought the Metaverse was and what it is today.
This book did not age well.
I made it through roughly 60 pages, fighting to give this book a chance after a couple off the cuff racial generalizations of made up countries and the frivlous tossing of the R-word. (It was the 90s, sure.) I even was willing to overlook for a few chapters the terrible Thesaurus like word dropping of random big letter adjectives mixed with lazy made up languages like “Taxilinga” the language of Taxi drivers. So much exposition and yet I still knew nothing of the world. Then I read through part of the Metaverse that was essentially a white supremacist community and that was a bit of a flag there.
Really what came down to it was that this protagonist was like every single twitch gamer bro that thought he was better than everyone else and “pwned” everyone that I grew up with and to this day know exist.
The only reason I didn’t give it 1 star is that for a book in the 90s, it does show virtual reality in a very similar light to what we see with the internet today.
Didn’t know what I was expecting from a book about the Metaverse from the 90s. I thought maybe I’d give it a shot. Maybe it would be nice to see what someone thought the Metaverse was and what it is today.
This book did not age well.
I made it through roughly 60 pages, fighting to give this book a chance after a couple off the cuff racial generalizations of made up countries and the frivlous tossing of the R-word. (It was the 90s, sure.) I even was willing to overlook for a few chapters the terrible Thesaurus like word dropping of random big letter adjectives mixed with lazy made up languages like “Taxilinga” the language of Taxi drivers. So much exposition and yet I still knew nothing of the world. Then I read through part of the Metaverse that was essentially a white supremacist community and that was a bit of a flag there.
Really what came down to it was that this protagonist was like every single twitch gamer bro that thought he was better than everyone else and “pwned” everyone that I grew up with and to this day know exist.
The only reason I didn’t give it 1 star is that for a book in the 90s, it does show virtual reality in a very similar light to what we see with the internet today.