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So here I sit at the DMV, waiting to update my Ausweis for the state, mostly so I can buy alcohol. I have learned for a lot of these government things the
penalties for not doing them are often far less costly in terms of time and money than doing them. For example, Nebraska has an ad valorum tax which they
charge every year for updating your vehicle registration. When we got a new car the bill came to over $500 and I decided to research the penalties: a $60 fine plus $30
in fess which did not get larger with repeat offenses. So I could get pulled over 5 times, get a ticket each time, and still come out ahead. You better believe I
stopped renewing the plates after that!
Which brings me to the somewhat post-government
Snowcrash,
where the government has been reduced to gathering and selling information (sound familiar, Edward Snowden?) while franchises and microstates have sprung up to
fill the void much like the Middle Ages. Stephenson is at his best when describing this societal backdrop and the technological underpinnings of how it works. He weaves human viruses,
computer viruses, and religion together under a common umbrella without ever referencing memetics, except, perhaps obliquely in his choice of the Sumarian
word me to encompass them. This book is from the early ninties, and it is impressive to see how accurately he saw how technology would advance with
the internet (which he termed the Metaverse). One can almost believe it was written contemporarily about an alternately government world with strange
words for things, if not for the occasional reference to things like payphones (when was the last time you saw one of those?) and the fact that the story's
Hiro Protagonist and other characters have parents who fought in WWII.
Stephenson's characters, however, are not so flawless. With a little editing the pizza delivery boy might not have abruptly turned into a genius programmer
who built the foundations of the Metaverse while becoming a master swordsman in his spare time. The mafia which starts out seeming brutal and sadistic might
not have become that paternal organization trying to save the world. But I quibble. The idea of a programmer/swordsman saving the world from a power hungry
character bent on enslaving it one person at a time through the use of ideas (me) that unlocked one's inner glossalist with the help of a skateboarding
chick, a Hong Kong oligarch, the mafia and, of course, a loyal dog name Fido is brilliant.
As a side note, I should also probably mentioned that I delved into the fictional world not for my children, as I usually do, but because my boss and Cara's
boss both recommended it independently. As they are both intelligent, successful people such coincidences are not to be ignored.
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