
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. 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. Perry