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Just re-read this book, and it's amazing how prescient Stephenson was in 1992. Re-reading gave me a strange combination of nostalgia, hope and fear of how technology can be used. The wide-open possibilities of the early net have been largely foreclosed by commercial interests, but the current implosion of Tw*tter and growing awareness of the dangers of siloed spaces may be creating a renaissance of DIY, distributed and free (as in speech) media. Or it could still move into the hypercapitalist hellscape of Snow Crash. The power is in our hands.

(re-post for experimental reasons)

Just re-read this book, and it's amazing how prescient Stephenson was in 1992. Re-reading gave me a strange combination of nostalgia, hope and fear of how technology can be used. The wide-open possibilities of the early net have been largely foreclosed by commercial interests, but the current implosion of Tw*tter and growing awareness of the dangers of siloed spaces may be creating a renaissance of DIY, distributed and free (as in speech) media. Or it could still move into the hypercapitalist hellscape of Snow Crash. The power is in our hands.

I'm actually re-reading this, but it's been long enough and I've forgotten enough that feels mostly new.