Cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson pulled off a difficult feat in his techno-thriller “Snow Crash;” he created a future that does not seem dated 25 years after it was written. How close did he come in predicting the early 21st Century?
I’ve been rereading “Snow Crash,” an early techno-thriller by Cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson. It’s a great read, but Stephenson also has pulled off a difficult feat: Creating a future that does not seem dated 25 years after it was written.
The book is set in a dysfunctional world of the not-too-distant future in which nation states have been replaced by corporate franchises and high-speed pizza delivery is run by the Mafia (You’ve got a friend in The Family!). How far into the future the book is set is not said explicitly, but from internal evidence the action appears to take place approximately right now.
How well did Stephenson predict the world of the mid-second-decade of the 21st Century? He got some of it right and some wrong, but overall the picture is close enough to reality that you don’t have to squint too hard to recognize the world around us. I have tallied some of his hits and misses.
Information Economy: He got this right. Stephenson’s America does few things well in 2015, but one of those things is gather information. A lot of people make their living that way and the Central Intelligence Corp. (the corporate successor to the CIA) is the main customer. But he made one glaring error. The CIC brass can’t stand guys that upload information indiscriminately. “It’s like writing down the license number of every car you see…” Of course, we know now that this is exactly what is happening today.
Security: Spot on. Stephenson’s description of getting into a federal building is disturbingly prescient of the post-9-11 world.
Virtual Reality: He came pretty close here, but his Metaverse is far ahead of what we have achieved. While virtual reality is pretty much limited to online gaming today, it is a way of life in Stephenson’s world. It replaces business tools such as GoToMeeting. When people want to meet, they do it in the Metaverse. Although it is technologically more sophisticated, the Metaverse is immediately familiar if you have watched people so caught up in social media that they are oblivious to the world around them.
Mobility: He stumbled here. People have mobile phones, but they have not evolved into computers and people do their mobile computing on laptops. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much miniaturization in personal technology. Wireless connectivity is exclusively cellular; there is no WiFi or WiMAX. Even when there is satellite backhaul, end users depend on cellular links. Mobile computing comes in a poor second to being plugged into fiber optics. There are even phone booths in “Snow Crash.” When was the last time you saw one of those that worked?
Wearable technology: He got this right. It is still kludgy in Stephenson’s world. He calls people who wear it gargoyles. We call them cyborgs.
Cable TV: Stephenson was right about cable carriers becoming dominant network companies. But he did not foresee the collapse of the TV part of the business as the Internet replaces traditional programming.
Hard Copy: There still is a lot of paper in Stephenson’s world. Lots of faxes, printers, and Xerox machines. These are all still around, of course, but it’s interesting that he didn’t envision a paperless world. But then, this is the guy who wrote the “Quicksilver” manuscript with a fountain pen.
Barcodes: Lots of ID is done through barcode rather than digital certs or other data on remotely readable chips.
Satellite Imaging: He nailed this one. In our world it’s called Google Earth and development was funded by the CIA. In “Snow Crash” it’s is called simply Earth and was developed by the CIC
The central idea of the book, the failure of nation states and their replacement by Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities, has not come to pass. Not yet. But with the spreading collapse of countries in the Mideast and the inability or unwillingness of the U.S. government to address the most basic needs of its citizens, it doesn’t appear all that unlikely.
I’m not yet sending away for my citizenship in Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong (not affiliated with the former Crown Colony), but maybe we should keep our options open.