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. | In any case, however, the future is pretty much not stoppable. There | was a time where the nobility tried to stop the crossbow, and then | firearms; there have been those who tried to stop the translation of | the bible, and to stop factories, and to stop genetic | engineering. Ideas aren't amenable to restraint. Nothing is as | inevitable as an idea who's time has come. The key to a liveable | future is learning how to adapt to the changes, not how to try to | prevent them. I said as much. I'm not purporting this as my opinions, just my understanding of Dr. Denning. Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume