On the Snow Crash-ification of the world
UPDATE: I just found a little bit more on the ongoing privatization of infrastructure that is an important part of the vision. Posted a couple more thoughts on it.
Boy do I love Snow Crash. I’ve read it more times than I care to remember, I’m pretty sure the day after I bought so long ago on a cold winter day in Chicago, I had read it twice. It’s totally cliche but I think it’s coming true on a few fronts.
The obvious one is the Metaverse. The web was sort of the first step and in a parellel step there’s the evolution of MMO’s and especially with the advent of non-games like Second Life and the new PS3 environment this is slowly creeping up on us. You could see a more Metaverse’y world come about if someone like Second Life open sourced their server software so that people could create their own Metaverse on their machine - it could link to a single Second Life road so on Second Life’s servers you’d see your house and then when you walked through the door you appeared on your server, potentially with your own customized code. Also in these online worlds there’s more integration between these worlds and the web. It’s all coming together…
Another wonderful aspect of Neal’s world was the complete privatization of everything. Oh, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Obviously private equity is having a field day taking everything private, but beyond that what do you find? Well, first we have the first steps to the Enforcers and Rent-A-Cop’s with the privatization of police forces. Sure we’ve always had these (lower case) rent-a-cops but they are increasingly given more enforcement capabilities . Great for the Snow Crash world, bad for the real world.
And that should go hand in hand with the advent of the Clink and the Hoosgow as we privatize our prisons! Awesome! We just need one more step and that’s the franchising of these prisons and we’ll be there!
The next step is the privatization of all our our infrastructure. Been reading all over the place how infrastructure is the new thing that private equity wants to get into - highways, bridges, airports, good times! (updated here with more a little more depth)
The next step is privatization of government. That seems to be happening of it’s own accord as the line between politics and big business blurs with the revolving doors between the two. And we’ve got Davos, the World Economic Forum, which brings the world elite of business and politics together to solve all their problems. Globalization is letting companies move assets and profits around. Huge companies like Microsoft and Google already have sprawling campuses that barely require their employees to leave for anything. How long can it really be?
And lastly and to bring us back to tech, we have the beginnings of the Central Intelligence Corporation - that huge database of news that stringers would load information up into and be paid according to it’s use. Isn’t that the web and citizen journalism? It isn’t as centralized as it was in Snow Crash, but it’s kind of the same - everyone loads up their information and a search engine lets you find what you’re looking for, the more people use it the more they get paid (via AdSense).
So there you have it, how far are we from the realization of this fine novel? Doesn’t seem to far to me.
