our ability to communicate using words and sentences and stuff. What, pray tell, did Enki use to facilitate this shift? Language.
See in ancient times, people all spoke the same language and were a bit like automatons-read: easy to control-and Enki's discovery allowed for independent thought, which in turn lead to the rise of humanity as we know it. When the main characters go all Sherlock-Holmes on us, they discover that civilization basically began in ancient Sumerian times when a priest named Enki found a way to hack the human brain. And if that’s not a reason to care then, um, we're not really sure what is.Īllow us to elaborate, though. Snow Crash is about the beginning and end of civilization as we know it. What is Snow Crash About and Why Should I Care? Then you might want to proceed with caution. Really, there's no reason not to read it…unless, of course, you buy the book's main premise, that ideas can hack your brain. That why it's one of Time's Top 100 Novels, as well as one of the classics of cyberpunk. In case you hadn't guessed yet, Neal Stephenson wrote a wicked-and wickedly entertaining-book when he published Snow Crash way back in 1992. And we do mean just around the corner-because while some of the inventions seem a tad far-fetched (cybernetic guard dogs, really?), it's hard not to see parallels to our own world in the corporate world, security-patrolled suburban enclaves, and uneven distribution of wealth that fill this book. Welcome to Snow Crash, which takes the above-mentioned ideas (along with many more), whirls them all together, and produces a fast-pasted, irreverent romp through a future that's just around the corner. Pour in a lot more…even a little more…Okay, there you go. Jostle the ingredients to make room for a few more: virtual reality, global conspiracies, memetics, linguistics, and dystopia.
Sprinkle in some Sumerian mythology, Catholicism and other flavors of Christianity, and a bit Aleut culture, then toss in a couple of motorcycles, guns, and tech trinkets. Oh, and you're going to need the biggest brain blender you can conjure, because we're going to be cramming a whole lot of ideas into this one.įirst pour in some hackers and skateboard punks next, a few dashes of detective work and World War II history.
Imagine that you are making a smoothie-an idea smoothie, to be exact.
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