Art imitates life... life imitates Snow Crash

It was the second half of the year 1997, another time, when the world was a lot less connected and the airwaves were still free of the clutches of cell phones, I was attending Universidad Panamericana (the Panamerican University) back then, my experience with science fiction was limited to a couple of Star Wars novels I'd managed to pick up right after college, that was about to change.

One of the most influential teachers I had back then, liked to diverge off topic every couple of classes, I guess to keep us from falling asleep and in some part to pass along more than mere facts and theoretical knowledge, in one such deviation he started talking about science fiction, cyberpunk in particular, a sub-genre of science fiction that deals with advanced technology in the near future basically ruining life as we know it, The Matrix is a good example of what cyberpunk is, fantastical futuristic technology but with a good degree of social commentary and dysfunction, all set in a very familiar to us.

Jerry, my teacher, recommended reading a novel by Neal Stephenson called Snow Crash, having a very healthy dose of curiosity and affection for books it took me no time to order it (the very first thing I ordered from Amazon) and read it. I could say that the rest is history, but it isn't, the rest is the present, life in the new century has been eerily bringing Snow Crash to life, from the printed page into the digital era.

I'll try to stir clear from the plot of the book and encourage you to read it, believe me, it's worth it, go read it after you are done here. What I'll like to talk about are the spooky "predictions" a book published in 1992 (almost 20 years ago) made about the way we are experiencing life every day.

- The plot revolves a round Hiro Protagonist a self styled hacker and swordsman, in the real world he's poor and a nobody, but inside the metaverse he's a legend, a founding member (and coder) of The Black Sun, one, if not the most exclusive online club, in there his avatar is powerful and respected, he even owns a big house with lots of space and rich decorations.

• Did you noticed? Stephenson coined the word metaverse (at one point the most widely used word for the internet) to refer to the online world, he envisioned online clubs with exclusive access, online celebrities and even gave us a word to name the pictures we use to identify ourselves on line. Snow Crash's metaverse served to inspire Second Life, a viable real business where people own pieces of virtual real state and real money exchanges hands.

- Hiro is man down on his luck, he lives inside a container unit near the airport, and thou he could work for a big corporation he hates the corporate life, not only that, but he shares he's dismal quarters with Vitaly, a musician trying to be the next big thing, he makes his life working menial jobs (extreme pizza delivery for the mafia) and uploading information to a central database (mostly about Vitaly), if someone decides to use this information, he'll get paid a commission for every use and maybe a big paycheck if the information turns out to be of use.

• I've just recently encountered an article detailing how in 2005 there was a storage space boom in Hawaii some years ago, it was so big that storage companies overreached, and when the inevitable downturn hit them the storage units started to get cheaper, and cheaper, until it made sense for some people to start a business, open a practice or have band rehearsals there. If you do a little research you'll find plenty of sites offering to pay you money to create content, write articles, take pictures, etc.  Now, criminal organizations managing legitimate business... that's just far fetched fiction, right?

The whole book is filled with interesting pieces of technology, and social behavior that sound eerily familiar, a full real-time view of the planet (google earth is heading there), automatic scanners that open gates if you have the right authorization (RFID codes), wearable computers to stay connected while traveling (Tablets and phones), access to digitized versions of all available information (eBooks, Project Gutenberg), etc, etc, etc.

Keep in mind that this book was published in 1992, the first widely used browser was released at the end of that year, mobile computing was the stuff of speculative far off science fiction. 

Go now, read it, look at the near future it proposes and wonder...