Hey, kids! It’s Akatzen here with another book report.

In 1992, Microsoft released Windows 3.1, an update to Version 3 released in 1990. Selling over a million copies in its first year alone, Windows 3 represented an epochal shift in mainstream personal computing towards GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) and away from CLIs (Command Line Interfaces) such as MS-Dos. (While GUIs had been around for quite some time — Xerox released a GUI model in 1981 — Windows 3 made GUIs mainstream.)
Just one year previous, Linus Torvalds started writing the code for Linux and Tim Berners-Lee introduced the public to the World Wide Web. Essentially, it allowed users to easily browse and open files around the world, but it is worth noting that “web browsing” did not become mainstream until 1993 when the Mosaic Web Browser hit the market.

The reason I say it is worth noting is because of one of Neal Stephenson’s visions of the future: the cyber-punk novel Snow Crash, published in 1992, a time where computers looked vastly different and had far fewer capabilities than the machines they are today.
The cyber-punk genre may sound a little strange to you, but films like The Matrix and Blade Runner owe much of their flavor and ambiance to cyber-punk.
Matrix 4?

The title of the book comes from a particular software failure on the Apple Macintosh: the system crashes and what appears on the screen is a bunch of gibberish resembling the static of an untuned or broken television.
As for the book itself, Stephenson originally envisioned the book to be a computer-generated graphic novel, with art by Tony Sheeder, but ran into difficulties when they realized that the image-processing software didn’t exist yet (and now it does. Go check out Mythoi: Wiglaf).
Stephenson eventually dropped the graphic novel idea in favor of producing pictureless fiction, and the ensuing novel is not only incredibly interesting, informative, and entertaining; Snow Crash also presents, in many areas, a shockingly accurate view of the future.

In many ways, Snow Crash has also had a direct influence on the direction and innovation software has gone.

In the Metaverse (the book’s idea of the internet’s future—think of it as a Virtual Reality mash-up of Second Life, Tron, and the World Wide Web), users navigate the ‘verse (ie. Browse the web) via the use of avatars. Yup, anytime you create a virtual persona of yourself (like you do on the Wii, the Xbox360, or any number of online applications), the avatar you are making is entirely due to Neal Stephenson’s use of the word in Snow Crash.

One of the programs the main character (Hiro Protagonist) uses is called Earth. What it does is create a 360 degree view of the earth from satellite photography, enabling you to view any place on earth you can think of, and zoom in as close as you want. Anyone who’s ever used Google Earth will find this description incredibly familiar. In fact, one of the developers at Google said the idea for Google Earth came, at least in part, from the similarly named program in Snow Crash.

Then there’s the burbclaves (essentially H.O.A. citystates), the complete corporatization of America, the devaluation of the dollar, the anti-rape measure called a dentata, and the ability for normal people to degenerate into savages after a crisis: a ridiculous picture of the future that feels ridiculous only because it’s actually possible.

Throw in some computer tech speak (like that GUI/CLI jargon I started the post with) and a highly intriguing exploration of ancient Sumeria, the Tower of Babel, and how civilization may have come about through a virus and you have an incredibly interesting and entertaining novel.

And then there’s the sex, drugs, rock and roll, sword-fighting, and motorcycle chases. There’s no getting around it: this book is cool. (Um, and by cool, I also mean that it has a few Rated R moments, so don’t toss a copy at your 12 year old computer geek younger brother or anything without making sure it’s something he’s mature enough for. So yeah, no copies for Mr. Wolff.)

Anyway, this book is highly recommended by Yours Truly, so give it a read. You won’t be disappointed.