Societal Snow Crash

A Prophetic Vision of Our Digital Dystopia

Warning: Plot Spoilers

This serves as a companion piece and plot refererence for the original post Snow Crash: Meme Magic In The Metaverse. Part of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice series. New to the series? Start with our foundational posts on Hyperreality and the Financial Matrix for essential context, or explore the full Table Of Contents.

Snow Crash: A Visionary Blueprint For Today’s Hyperreality

In the realm of science fiction, few works have proven as prescient and thought-provoking as Snow Crash. At the time of its publication in 1992, the digital universe that now pervades our lives was but an embryo, gestating within the womb of academia, science, and the military. Into this quiet digital dawn, Snow Crash exploded onto the cyberpunk literary scene with the force of a cultural supernova.

Arriving a full seven years before The Matrix—a film that itself drew significant inspiration from its pages—Snow Crash seared its way into our collective unconscious.

Neal Stephenson

’s work popularized concepts that have since become cornerstones of our tech-infused lives, shaping the vision and actions of influential tech industry leaders, and paving the way for the burgeoning cryptocurrency and “web3” movements. One of Snow Crash’s most significant contributions to the digital lexicon is the term Metaverse, which Stephenson coined to describe an all-encompassing virtual reality akin to the Matrix.

The novel is set in a future that—in many ways—bears an unsettling resemblance to our present reality. Stephenson masterfully weaves together a tapestry of virtual reality, ancient languages, mythology, artificial intelligence (AI), and memes—yielding an incisive framework through which to examine the pervasive hyperreality that defines our contemporary existence.

Snow Crash’s Vision Of The Future Mirrors Our Present

Set in a dystopian 21st-century America, Snow Crash presents a bleak vision of a nation in the throes of economic collapse and societal fragmentation. The once-mighty United States government—reduced to a mere shadow of its former self—grasps desperately at the vestiges of its power. Despite attempts to project strength and maintain order, it has been rendered impotent and largely irrelevant.

In the wake of the old order’s collapse, the nation has fractured into a kaleidoscope of decentralized, self-governing fiefdoms—“franchulates” (franchise-consulates)—each defined by its own unique set of laws, distinctive character, sovereign borders, localized currencies and economies, and private security forces. These mega-corporations and franchised city-states—epitomized by the likes of Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong—vie for dominance in Snow Crash’s neo-feudal landscape; they provide essential services and the promise of security in exchange for loyalty and citizenship.

Other core governmental functions such as police forces and prisons have also been privatized and franchised, and rely heavily on unsettling advertising slogans (“THE HOOSEGOW - Premium incarceration and restraint services - We Welcome Busloads!”). Parallels can be seen in modern America, as prisons are privatized, citizens band together to crowdfund private security measures, and corporations like TJ Maxx and Marshalls install body cameras on their employees.

As governmental dysfunction intensifies in our own world, corporate entities such as Domino’s Pizza step in to fill the void, mending potholes and clearing our snow-clogged roads.

In Snow Crash, self-segregated, balkanized neighborhoods and towns—fortified enclaves aptly termed “Burbclaves,” a portmanteau melding “suburbs” and “enclaves”—are bastions of order and functionality. Burbclaves are stark counterpoints to the dysfunctional chaos that reigns beyond their borders, echoing trends in our own world such as self-segregating “white fortress” cities seceding from non-white regions:

The Raft—a sprawling flotilla of ships crowded with refugees and economic migrants—drifts inexorably towards this fractured America, mirroring our own global migration crises and the recent migrant caravan:

You’ll Own Nothing And Be Happy

Amidst this chaotic landscape, Hiro Protagonist—pizza delivery man extraordinaire, master freelance hacker, and unlikely hero—navigates the blurred boundaries between virtual and physical realities, later inspiring Neo’s similar journey as a real-world hacker leading a double life within the Matrix.

In the physical world, Hiro navigates a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which traditional societal structures have all but collapsed and basic necessities such as housing have become unattainable for many.  As a pizza “Deliverator” for the Mafia—Uncle Enzo’s CosaNostra Pizza Inc, a quasi-governmental mega-corporation—Hiro lives in a cramped 20-by-30 storage locker, which he is forced to share with a roommate.

This living arrangement foreshadows our current real-world housing crisis—where skyrocketing prices and stagnant wages have pushed people in many former “first world” countries into “alternative” living situations that embody the “You’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy” ethos so en vogue amongst the Davos crowd. As in Brave New World—and again echoing our own Davos-infused reality—the population is kept content with shallow "bread and circus" distractions: as “movies, music, microcode (software), and pizza”.

Metaverse

“Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse. It beats the shit out of the U-Stor-It.”

—Snow Crash

Hiro finds refuge in the Metaverse, a fully immersive virtual reality world that has woven itself into the tapestry of everyday life, dissolving the boundaries of actual and simulated experiences. This fusion creates a hyperreal setting that mirrors our own—where actions and consequences flow freely between the two realms. Decisions made and events occurring within the Metaverse have tangible effects on the real world, and conversely, real-world happenings significantly influence the digital landscape—creating a complex and interconnected feedback loop between them.

Hiro’s cramped storage locker in the physical world stands in stark contrast to his spacious and elegant virtual home in the Metaverse:

That’s why Hiro has a nice big house in the Metaverse but has to share a 20-by-30 in Reality... people in Hiro’s neighborhood are good programmers, so it’s tasteful. The houses look like real houses. There are a couple of Frank Lloyd Wright reproductions and some fancy Victoriana.

The Metaverse offers Hiro and other disenfranchised programmers a sanctuary from the harsh real world. Within this digital realm, they wield the power to create and inhabit virtual spaces that provide the solace and security that eludes them in the physical world.

The juxtaposition of Hiro’s virtual affluence and real-world destitution mirrors the hyperreality that permeates our own contemporary society. This was poignantly illustrated in the pandemic-era New Yorker cover, which depicted a woman confined to a shoebox-sized apartment while emulating an expansive existence on the internet through her fake Zoom background. In a similar vein, during COVID lockdowns, media outlets drew explicit parallels to Snow Crash’s Metaverse, with articles like The Metaverse: How Video Games Are Offering An Alternative To Isolation, emphasizing the role of virtual worlds in providing comfort and connection amidst “social distancing” and confinement.   

Within the Metaverse, Hiro assumes the role of a master swordsman and computer hacker, his avatar—a now-ubiquitous term coined by Stephenson to refer to one’s digital representation—serving as a conduit for expressing his idealized self. Hiro often consults the Librarian—an anthropomorphic artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that aids him in navigating the vast data troves within the Metaverse; the Librarian can only answer specific questions, so Hiro must learn to ask the right questions (similar to “prompt engineering”). The Librarian blurs the lines between software and sentience, mirroring our own growing reliance on AI assistants and algorithms.

Economics, The Metaverse, And Cryptocurrencies

In the physical world of the novel, hyperinflation has nearly rendered traditional fiat currencies obsolete, giving rise to alternative real and virtual economies independent of central financial authorities. As Hiro navigates the Metaverse, he encounters a world where the line between information and currency dissolves, and digital assets hold substantial real-world value.

While real world currencies have collapsed, the Metaverse’s economy is driven by digital assets that parallel the utility and economic dynamics of modern-day cryptocurrencies. In the Metaverse, digital assets—ranging from coded items like virtual Japanese katana swords to virtual real estate—accrue value through their functional use and their embeddedness in the digital community’s social structure.

The novel thus foreshadows the current rise of decentralized finance (DeFi) in our own real world. The advent of Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, and the explosive growth of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) in the art and collectibles world have blurred the boundaries between digital and tangible realms, echoing the dynamics envisioned in the Metaverse .

Stephenson’s prophetic vision underscores a crucial concept: the perceived value of digital assets—both in the virtual and real world—is intrinsically linked to their utility and integration within a network of users. It presages a profound shift in the traditional notions of value and our understanding of what constitutes an “asset—or what “real” even means in an increasingly digital age. This idea parallels arguments made by Bitcoin proponents, who assert that the non-replicability, network effects, and utility of Bitcoin solidify its value in our physical world despite its intangible, digital nature.

Meme Magic In The Metaverse: Language As Code

In Snow Crash, ideas, information, and language are powerful entities capable of performing “meme magic”—of shaping and manipulating reality. The battle for control over reality is waged not only in the physical world, but in our minds and in the virtual realm as well.

Language transcends its traditional role as a means of communication: it emerges as a potent viral code capable of infiltrating and reprogramming both human minds and computer systems alike. This concept of language as an infectious agent imbued with magical powers forms the foundation of the novel’s central theme of memetic warfare. In this battleground, information, ideas, and language itself are weaponized, becoming tools to manipulate and control not only computers, but also both collective and individual human consciousnesses.

Hiro finds himself in a race against time to unravel the secrets behind Snow Crash, a mysterious entity that exists simultaneously as a computer virus in the virtual world and a mind-altering drug in the physical world.

In the Metaverse, Snow Crash manifests as a computer virus capable of causing a system crash, displaying a classic "snow-like" pattern on screen (above). Meanwhile, in the real world, Snow Crash takes the form of a drug that affects the human brain, causing symptoms ranging from nonsensical babbling to complete catatonia.

The parallel effects of Snow Crash in both realms emphasize the interconnectedness and vulnerability of the human mind and computer systems. The permeability between digital, mental, and physical realities creates a state of hyperreality where the boundaries become increasingly indistinguishable.

The plot thickens as Hiro traces the origins of the virus back to ancient Sumeria and discovers its connections to the legendary Tower of Babel. In ancient times, humans existed as a monoculture—a singular society where knowledge and ideas were transmitted not through individual conscious thought, but through a viral-like spread of information.

This ancient mode of information dissemination resembles the modern-day Non-Player Characters (NPCs) meme, which portrays many in our society as similar to NPCs in video games—lacking individual thought and mindlessly adhering to scripted, predictable behaviors without deviation.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming: Hacking The Mind

Hiro learns that the ancient Sumerian language is a primordial programming language for the human brain, serving as the fundamental cognitive framework that underlies human thought processes, making it the ultimate neuro-linguistic programming tool. Much like an assembly or machine language in computer programming, Sumerian is depicted as directly programming the brain—executing commands that bypass higher-level conceptual thought to control individuals at a more fundamental, pre-linguistic level.

This unique characteristic makes the human mind susceptible to hijacking and reprogramming. When individuals are exposed to memes encoded in the Sumerian language, these viral ideas can infiltrate their minds—overriding free will and compelling the infected individual to perform actions beyond their control.

The Babel Event & Meme Magic

We learn that the Babel event—which fragmented a once-unified linguistic community—was intentionally orchestrated. To shield humanity from a devastating virus that targeted both its physical health and cognitive processes, Enki—the Sumerian god of wisdom and magic—crafted a protective spell. Using his understanding of language and its power over the human mind, he engineered a counter-virus—the “nam shub of Enki”—written in the programming language of the human subconscious.

Meme magic in Snow Crash is illustrated through the ‘nam-shub’—a Sumerian term meaning “potent incantation” or “speech with magical force”. The nam-shub is a spell that actualizes what it narrates:

The nam-shub of Enki is both a story and an incantation," the Librarian says. "A self-fulfilling fiction…in its original form, which this translation only hints at, it actually did what it describes.

This duality highlights the power of language as a transformative force, capable of altering reality simply through its expression and reception. As a story that acts out its own effects, the nam-shub exemplifies how deeply embedded ideas, or memes, can reprogram human thought and behavior, and become a “self-fulfilling fiction”.

A speech with magical force. Nowadays, people don’t believe in these kinds of things. Except in the Metaverse, that is, where magic is possible. The Metaverse is a fictional structure made out of code. And code is just a form of speech -- the form that computers understand. The Metaverse in its entirety could be considered a single vast nam-shub [ed: meme magic], enacting itself on…a fiber-optic network

Enki’s “nam-shub”anti-virus functioned as a form of linguistic and cognitive interference—altering human neurological pathways, reprogramming their brains and rendering them incapable of comprehending the Sumerian language. This cataclysmic Babel event shattered the prevailing mono-language paradigm, fragmenting human consciousness into a kaleidoscope of different languages and worldviews. In doing so, Enki’s nam-shub safeguarded humanity from the dangers of a singular, unified control mechanism—the power of a single language to dominate and direct human thought and behavior.

Memes and information create and alter not just perceived virtual reality in the Metaverse, but physical reality itself. Language is a powerful programmatic code capable of infiltrating and manipulating reality at its core. The novel’s ancient Sumerian “meme magic” serves as a potent metaphor for our own hyperreality and the increasing permeability between digital, mental, and physical realms.

Pokémon Shock: A Real-Life Snow Crash

While the concept of a mind and physical biology-altering information virus might seem far-fetched, it’s not as implausible as it may initially appear. Hiro learns that snow crash is a digitally encoded virus that infects hackers via the optic nerve, and that the drug on the street is chemically processed blood serum taken from those infected with the virus, causing the same symptoms as the hackers experience when infected.

In a chilling parallel, an infamous Pokémon episode aired in Japan five years after the novel’s publication, creating a phenomenon known as the “Pokémon Shock.”

During the episode, a Pikachu attack caused the screen to flash extremely bright, repetitive red and blue strobe visual effects for five seconds, inducing epileptic seizures in some viewers and causing at least 600 people to be taken to the hospital by ambulance (admittedly, some were likely due to mass hysteria). Remarkably, when reporting on the incident, the Japanese nightly news replayed the offending scene, prompting even more seizures; the Pokémon Shock was later parodied in an episode of The Simpsons:

Infohazards: The Mind Has No Firewall

Similar to the unforeseen effects of the Pokémon episode, Snow Crash’s treatment of “meme magic” forces us to reconsider the nature of information and our relationship to it. Our minds are susceptible to “infohazards”—informational threats that can exploit vulnerabilities inherent to the human brain and have negative consequences for our minds and physical reality itself—including neurolinguistic programming and subliminal messaging. The “mind has no firewall”: unlike digital systems, which we can protect with cybersecurity measures, the human brain remains open to various forms of information warfare and psychological manipulations.

The neurolinguistic memes in Snow Crash influence human behavior, just as codes in various forms—ranging from binary to symbolic and linguistic—dictate our own daily interactions and experiences. These codes serve as the foundation for our navigation through mental, virtual, and physical realms, profoundly shaping our understanding of and engagement with reality.

#multiflation #hyperreal #hyperreality