Perry E. Metzger wrote: | Adam Shostack writes: | > Perry E. Metzger wrote: | > | > | Adam Shostack writes: | > | > Snow Crash is a book about a future in which governments are | > | > ineffective. Companies run things, and have complete local control. | > | > The world has gone to hell, and as a result, life is nasty, poor, | > | > brutish and short. Many people do not look forward to this world. | > | | > | Snow Crash is hardly scary. You have characterized it as a | > | story where life is nasty brutish and short but that isn't the same | > | book that I read. at all. | > | > The CIA privatized & selling data to all comers? An | > unstoppable wave of illegal immigration coming to California? Sounds | > pretty scary to many people. There are other readings, but that one | > is there. | | Lets be concrete. You say that life in the book is nasty, brutish and | short. The book does not depict people's lives as being short, and it | especially does not appear that most people living in that world have | lives that end in violence. Furthermore, it doesn't depict their lives | as nasty -- it seems like America only more so, with ever escalating | guarantees that your pizza will be delivered on time and fairly normal | lives being lead. Given that 'nasty, poor, brutish and short' is clearly an allusion to Hobbes, I'm not sure I should defend it literally. However, I'd see life in a converted self store (where Hiro & Vitaly live), or in a job with a lie detector test every 2 weeks (such as YT's mom is forced into), or working in a computer industry where brains get fried (da5vid), as nasty. See below for brutish. | As for illegal immigration, I saw no depiction of it in the book, and | so far as I can tell the legal structure depicted in the book has no | such concept as "illegal immigration". And how do you think the people panicking over the raft's arrival see the 'yellow peril?' I would expect that parts of the remaining US government are quite distraught over it, and consider it illegal. | I can't see that you read the same book. | | As the cypherpunks significance of this is rapidly vanishing, I'd | suggest that this be taken to private mail. The Cypherpunks relevance is that you & I see Snow Crash as a neat place to live, while Dorothy sees it as a hell. I'm attempting to explain that viewpoint. If you'd like to continue in private mail, thats fine. Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume