From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 1996 06:06:44 +0800
To: Adam Shostack <adam@lighthouse.homeport.org>
Subject: Re: No matter where you go, there they are.
In-Reply-To: <199604120314.WAA05634@homeport.org>
Message-ID: <199604131757.NAA28090@jekyll.piermont.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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.

In any case, however, the future is pretty much not stoppable. There
was a time where the nobility tried to stop the crossbow, and then
firearms; there have been those who tried to stop the translation of
the bible, and to stop factories, and to stop genetic
engineering. Ideas aren't amenable to restraint. Nothing is as
inevitable as an idea who's time has come. The key to a liveable
future is learning how to adapt to the changes, not how to try to
prevent them.

Perry