From: Adam Shostack <adam@lighthouse.homeport.org>
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 13:05:41 +0800
To: perry@piermont.com
Subject: Hobsian interpretations of Snow Crash ( was No matter where you go...)
In-Reply-To: <199604132331.TAA01039@jekyll.piermont.com>
Message-ID: <199604150240.VAA17552@homeport.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


Perry E. Metzger wrote:
| Adam Shostack writes:
| > Perry E. Metzger wrote:
| > 
| > | Adam Shostack writes:
| > | > 	Snow Crash is a book about a future in which governments are
| > | > ineffective.  Companies run things, and have complete local control.
| > | > The world has gone to hell, and as a result, life is nasty, poor,
| > | > brutish and short.  Many people do not look forward to this world.
| > | 
| > | Snow Crash is hardly scary. You have characterized it as a
| > | story where life is nasty brutish and short but that isn't the same
| > | book that I read. at all.
| > 
| > 	The CIA privatized & selling data to all comers?  An
| > unstoppable wave of illegal immigration coming to California?  Sounds
| > pretty scary to many people.  There are other readings, but that one
| > is there.
| 
| Lets be concrete. You say that life in the book is nasty, brutish and
| short. The book does not depict people's lives as being short, and it
| especially does not appear that most people living in that world have
| lives that end in violence. Furthermore, it doesn't depict their lives
| as nasty -- it seems like America only more so, with ever escalating
| guarantees that your pizza will be delivered on time and fairly normal
| lives being lead.

	Given that 'nasty, poor, brutish and short' is clearly an
allusion to Hobbes, I'm not sure I should defend it literally.

	However, I'd see life in a converted self store (where Hiro &
Vitaly live), or in a job with a lie detector test every 2 weeks (such
as YT's mom is forced into), or working in a computer industry where
brains get fried (da5vid), as nasty.

	See below for brutish.

| As for illegal immigration, I saw no depiction of it in the book, and
| so far as I can tell the legal structure depicted in the book has no
| such concept as "illegal immigration".

	And how do you think the people panicking over the raft's
arrival see the 'yellow peril?'  I would expect that parts of the
remaining US government are quite distraught over it, and consider it
illegal.

| I can't see that you read the same book.
| 
| As the cypherpunks significance of this is rapidly vanishing, I'd
| suggest that this be taken to private mail.

	The Cypherpunks relevance is that you & I see Snow Crash as a
neat place to live, while Dorothy sees it as a hell.  I'm attempting
to explain that viewpoint.  If you'd like to continue in private mail,
thats fine.

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume