Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
-- Marc Audy
In his novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson presents a chilling portrait of the
future. It is the 21st century and the American government is no longer in control.
Franchises control the world and the average `Clint' and `Brandy' live in FOQNEs
(Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities) known as Burbclaves. Every physical entity
of life is privately owned; the highway systems are owned by Fairlanes Inc. and Cruiseways
Inc., who compete for the driving market. Franchises run Burbclaves tailored to very
specific population segments; Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, Nova Sicilia, Narcolombia,
all-Mormon Desert and New South Africa are just a few examples. The MetaCops, the Crips,
and the ENFORCERS enforce the law, the Clink and the Hoosegow incarcerate and Judge Bob's
Judicial System conducts trials. Even religion is franchised: Reverend Wayne's Pearly
Gates has a monopoly on worship services.
The story centers around Hiro Protagonist, a freelance hacker who has fallen on hard
times but has connections that recruit him to `save the world' when the Snow Crash virus
hits. The other main character is Y.T., a fifteen year-old Kourier, who the head of the
Mafia takes under his wing. Once Hiro and Y.T. become `pods' (partners), a fast paced,
twisting plot ensues. It follows Hiro's research both in the Metaverse (Stephenson's
Internet) and reality and Y.T.'s actions in reality to thwart the virus that threatens to
enslave the entire population of the world.
Snow Crash is a superb novel with a fantastic plot; however, what makes this book
useful when discussing social, legal, and ethical issues in computing is not the plot or
the character development, but rather the way that the novel provokes thought on so many
different issues, computing-related and otherwise. The following is a discussion of just a
few of the computing issues that the novel raises.
One of the first things that becomes noticeable when reading this novel is the complete
lack of privacy that most characters experience. Hiro ("The Deliverator")
presents an idea of how bad it is: "So he's in their database now...retinal patterns,
DNA, void graph fingerprints, foot prints, palm prints, wrist prints, every fucking part
of the body that had wrinkles on it and digitized it into their computer" (Stephenson
6). Further, CIC, the Central Intelligence Corporation, collects information on everything
imaginable; freelance and hired `stringers' collect information and upload it to the
Library. The freelancers receive a fee whenever this information is accessed. This kind of
database allows anyone to spy on every other person and store their findings in an
accessible location, in hopes that someone else will be willing to pay to get the
information. A further example of how little privacy exists comes from the feds, who
subject their employees to frequent polygraph tests, regardless of the employee's consent.
Central to the novel is an `Internet' called The Metaverse. This is a complete virtual
reality and is immensely popular. People's virtual representation, or `avatars', range
from highly customized constructs running off high end machines, to `Clint' and `Brandy',
the most popular off-the-shelf. At the lowest end are grainy black and white avatars of
people logging in from public terminals. The Metaverse raises several interesting issues:
the first is the animercials that appear as soon as you step on to `The Street'. While
most `neighborhoods' in the Metaverse ban animercials, anyone on The Street is fair game
for a bombardment of flying animals that materialize into advertisements once they arrive
at their target. These animercials are disturbingly realistic in their representation of
how the Internet really has developed.
Both the Metaverse and the reality of Stephenson's world are characterized by control
of information. While L. Bob Rife, "the last of the nineteenth-century
monopolists", does not own the CIC he does control the vast majority of the network
which carries information between stringers and the CIC (113). Further "he owns the
majority share in Pearlgate Associates, which is the multinational that runs Reverend
Wayne's Pearly Gates chain" (112). Which effectively gives him control over religion.
His control over the Metaverse is even greater: while the home of each person and
corporation in the Metaverse is housed on personally owned computers, The Street and the
machinery that run the Metaverse is housed by L. Bob Rife's equipment, thus giving him
control over the Metaverse's existence.
The final issue that the Metaverse brings up is the role of programmers in the world of
technology. While many things in the world are divided among the haves and the have-nots,
the Metaverse demonstrates how another elite can be considered. People like Hiro, Da5id,
and Juanita who were involved in the initial design of the Metaverse have a distinct
advantage as they know how to manipulate the environment and are aware of
"secret" backdoors.
Another issue raised by this novel is the use of biological components in mechanical
objects. Stephenson's world contains both humans and animals, which are machine hybrids.
The issue of using biological components in mechanical objects is quite real and certainly
worth considering. Already researchers are working to incorporate organic DNA into
mechanical objects since information can be transferred along organic synapses much faster
then in any human designed cable. One's first reaction to this is revulsion; it seems well
beyond the realm of ethical behavior to transform any living creature into a mechanical
product, regardless of the benefits to humans or even perceived benefits to the creature
itself. One hybrid character points out that the novel's pseudo animals, when they are not
`working', are "Chasing Frisbees through the surf. Forever. Eating steaks that grow
on trees. Lying beside the fire in a hunting lodge" (248). And when the animals are
`working' they can travel in excess of seven hundred miles per hour, which may well be
liberating "for a pit-bull to be capable of running seven hundred miles per
hour" (248). Even with such `liberating' aspects, it still seems completely unethical
for humans to place an animal's brains into a mechanical shell.
The final and most interesting idea that I want to discuss is that the human brain is
actually a computer of sorts. The idea has been discussed for many years, but Stephenson
presents what seems to be a new way of looking at the issue.
Stephenson uses Middle Eastern mythology to explain his idea that there was once only a
single language, which has now diverged into over ten thousand languages, if one includes
regional dialects. This is closely liked to the biblical story of Babel, where the Lord
"confound(s) their language, that they may not understand one another's speech"
(Genesis 11:9).
Working from this idea, Stephenson adopts Summerian mythical objects called `me'. The
`me' are analogous to algorithms in that they are instructions "for carrying out
certain activities essential to the society" (Stephenson 257). This implies that the
`me' are "the operating system of society" since they are the means for
"organizing an inert collection of people into a functioning system", just as
the operating system of a computer is the means for organizing an inert collection of
electrons into a functioning system (257).
Stephenson uses this in two ways to suggest that the human brain is the hardware and
that the language we speak is the software. First, there is the conclusion that
"learning language is like blowing code into PROMs" (277). PROMs (Programmable
Read-Only Memory) are chips that code is inserted (blown) into and that can never lose
that code. PROMs come from the factory blank and so compare well to the relativist theory
of linguists that say the "newborn human brain has no structure" (277). Thus
language acquisition can be compared to blowing into a PROM and that the language becomes
as the universalist theory of linguistics says "a permanent part of the brain's deep
structure" (277).
Stephenson fails to take this argument to its next logical step and which would explain
why a young child can learn a new language much more easily than an adult can. Since the
PROM is empty (blank) initially it is easy to `blow' the initial information into the
chip, but as time passes it becomes more and more difficult to `blow' information into the
chip since it must not displace the code already in the chip. This is similar to language
acquisition as a person learns more language more pathways have been made in the brain and
the new language has to work around the initial pathways. So a young child can learn
languages faster since there are less pathways to work around.
The second idea of interests builds around the fact that in the Summerian language,
nam-shub is "speech with magical force" (211). The nam-shub of Enki is
how Summerian mythos explains the divergence of human language. The nam-shub in its final
lines states that Enki, "endowed with wisdom, changed the speech in their mouths, put
contention into it, into the speech of man that had been one" (217). The nam-shub was
a story, but it was a story that actually occurred as it was told, best translated into
English as an incantation. One theory to describe this is that "there was some kind
off phenomenon" that, like computer virus, "coiled around the
brainstem", causing humans to be unable to understand the Summerian language anymore
(218). One character posits "that the nam-shub of Enki is neurolinguistic virus"
(218).
Linguistics have shown that "some languages are better at metaphor than
others" (277), this compares to computer languages, and how some languages are more
`powerful' than others. For example, BASIC and Pascal are very high level languages that
are not very powerful since it is harder to `describe' things, while C, C++ and Java are
more descriptive and thus more powerful. Assembly Language is more descriptive, and
machine language is the most descriptive and thus the most powerful since it manipulates
the individual bits. While Stephenson seems to compare Summerian to machine language, it
appears that Summerian language was much more like Assembly Language and that neurons
themselves would be equivalent to machine language. Regardless of whether you accept this
view or Stephenson's it is evident that Summerian was an extremely powerful language which
Enki used to program both system and application software (the `me') and a virus (his
nam-shub) to `run' on the human mind.
If the Summerian mythology is correct, the above argument strongly supports the idea
that the human brain functions similarly to a computer. This is just a brief description
of some of the issues Snow Crash touches upon, and there are many others. It is
well worth taking the time to read this novel and will certainly provoke thought and
insight on many different computing-related issues.
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