Reading Snow Crash I feel scared about our future as a society but hopeful at the same time. The world Stephenson creates is based on what we know but at some point society took a different turn leaving us with something sick and twisted. The police force is privatized making the officers' sense of duty garbled to the point that Y.T.'s greatest fear when being arrested is having to sit through thirty minutes of disclaimers and advertisements. Prisons are privatized as well, which as we recently learned from a case in Pennsylvania, can lead to some questionable sentencing by judges who stand to make more money depending on how many people they send off to jail.
As of now the case of two judges convicted of fraud over that incident is a news worthy scandal. The worrisome part about the justice system in the book is that it seems plausible and people accept it. Stephenson uses alienation and a fair amount of hyperbole to invoke fear. We all have an understanding of what the role of a police force is; we hope that justice is blind. But in this book assumptions like that are thrown back in the reader's face.
On page 83 we are introduced to A-367. A-367 is a guard dog with a friendly personality and his own little yard. At least he would be a guard dog (he even thinks he's a guard dog) but in fact it's a semi-autonomous guard unit that must either move very fast or be super-cooled so it doesn't melt. When a few pages later a grenade goes off damaging A-367 it is hard to not feel sorry for him. He says of himself that he belongs to a big pack of nice doggies. These are all machines, programmed to remove anyone from a certain part of town based on their citizenship. Citizenship is either bought or given to anyone of asian descent.
Surrounded by questionable characters who flee their responsibilities and confines of class into the metaverse there is also some hope. Relationships still work the same way (more or less). Y.T. talks about being mad at her boyfriend because he doesn't have the time to help her break out of jail but plans on forgiving him on their next date if he's willing to grovel. She also decides to help A-367 after he gets damaged although there was no way of knowing if she could get hurt or if A-367 is even a sentient being. All said and done, people in snow crash are still trying to be decent human beings, whether it's Hiro giving up a future fortune to help his mother or Y.T. saving a semi autonomous guard unit.
That story you linked is shocking! The level of corruption seems like something right out of Snow Crash, yet here it is in the reality world of 2009. This was exactly what I was thinking about when I read Snow Crash--despite the technological advances, Stephenson's world has elements that are all too familiar. Hyperbole, yes, but very much stemming from our day to day lives.
ReplyDeleteHiro and Y.T. do seem like selfless characters for the most part. What I'd like to know is how the metaverse changes the way they interact with people in reality. I almost feel like all the avatar interaction would make them insincere, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe the metaverse effects their real relationships in some other way I haven't considered yet.