Snow Crash Essay Research Paper In Snow

Snow Crash Essay, Research Paper

In Snow Crash, a novel by Neal Stephenson, Stephenson examines how expanding technology affects a society. He introduces us to a world where a computer virus is altering people s minds, and where they have no control over themselves. He vividly describes how Hiro, the protagonist, must fight the virus to save the future of the world.

Technology is expanding everyday. Our society has grown and expanded and has become extremely powerful because of new technologies. People are learning how to use computers in place of their tasks. The Internet is a prime example is of expanding technology. One can obtain yesterday s and today s news, listen to music, talk to a friend over seas, view pornography, and countless other things in the privacy of one s home via the Internet. There is no way to really regulate what is on the Internet. Essentially, the government has no place on the Internet. This world is free of from laws. As society moves closer to advanced technology, the government becomes removed. There is no way for them to regulate society s actions once everything is computer based. In Snow Crash, Stephenson creates the Metaverse. In this society no laws exist.

Hiro, the Protagonist, is the narrator of the novel. As Hiro tells the story, there is no form of government anymore. The government has long been over, and has been replaced by individual corporations with their own sets of rules. There were many corporations, Mr. Lee s Greater Hong Kong being one of them, where one could be a citizen and apply for a passport. Mr. Lee owned franchises in Hong Kong and people needed a passport in order to get into Greater Hong Kong (p.99). Information was vital to these corporations. Mr. Lee s Greater Hong Kong asked people to share information with them if the person decided to join the corporation and become partners (p.99). Hiro worked for the CIC (Central Intelligence Agency), where he got interesting information-gossip, videotape, audiotape, or a computer disc concerning different corporations. Large corporations, or any person interested in something he found, paid him for use of the information and used it to their advantage (p.22).

As well as working for he CIC, Hiro is a freelance hacker. He is one of the creators of the Metaverse. The Metaverse is “virtual reality.” People here are represented by a piece of software called an avatar. Depending on the grade of equipment you own or use, decides how nice your avatar will be. The best type of avatar is a replica of the user. One can be whatever he/she desires. In the Metaverse one person could talk to another person across the country. Millions of people can be in the Metaverse. There is no limit to the amount of time one spends in the Metaverse. In reality, Hiro lives in the slums, but in the Metaverse, he lives in a big house in a suburban area. The houses on his street look like real houses. Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse. He has top of the line equipment, and is able to manipulate programs to his advantage.

There are many similarities between the Metaverse and reality. In the Metaverse, there is still a separation of people. There are different “classes” of people. The type of equipment a person has separates people in the Metaverse. Some popular models in the novel are Brandy and Clint. These are off-the-shelf avatars. If a person does not own a computer, but logs on from a public place and enter the Metaverse through the monorail, or through pay terminal, then they use these cheap off-the-shelf avatars with grainy black and white images. These avatar s images are of no quality and are really no fun to look at. The people who see these cheap avatars are usually lower class people in reality and they are using the Metaverse to get closer to someone famous, whereas they could not do this in reality (p.41). Top of the line avatars are used by people who usually own their own laptops. Despite the kind of avatar one has, everyone is able to talk to each other, but the “classes” choose not to mix-just like in reality (p.36).

Whenever Hiro walked through he Metaverse, he was careful not to take things from avatars. He did not know, for fear, if it would be a virus, and that would hurt his computer. Death was not possible in the Metaverse until the creation of Snow Crash. In the Metaverse, it was possible to fight, but no one was literally hurting anyone. It was possible to break up someone else s avatar with whatever tools one could create. Hiro was able to fight with swords that he always kept with him. Hiro wrote rules where after you had “slain” an avatar, the avatar was thrown out of the Metaverse, and in reality the person could not re-boot into the Metaverse for a few minutes. With the invention of Snow Crash, all of that changed. Snow Crash was a virus that not only shut down your computer, it shut you down mentally as person. People entered the Metaverse so regularly-especially hackers- that subconsciously their has become a susceptible binary code in computers. Snow Crash affects the optic nerve and because of this the infected person loses control of their mind.

Snow Crash came about to control people. It not only affected hackers in the Metaverse, it also affected people in reality. In reality, Snow Crash is made up of an infected person s blood laced with cocaine so that it passes as regular drug. Once someone takes Snow Crash,