Snow Crash

“There’s not much more for Hiro to do. Besides, interesting things happen along borders—transitions—not in the middle where everything is the same. There may be something happening along the border of the crowd, back where the lights fade into the shade of the overpass.”

Key takeaway

Interesting stuff happens at the edges

“Uh, why don’t you come with me. You know, some things are easier to show than to explain verbally.”

Key takeaway

The rise of snapchat and camera as communication

“Rife’s key realization was that there’s no difference between modern culture and Sumerian. We have a huge workforce that is illiterate or alliterate and relies on TV—which is sort of an oral tradition. And we have a small, extremely literate power elite—the people who go into the Metaverse, basically—who understand that information is power, and who control society because they have this semimystical ability to speak magic computer languages.”

Key takeaway

Information is power. Access to information used to be limited to the wealthy but the internet democratizes flow of information