![]() ![]() Within one of the phyles, the Neo-Victorians, one of the more highly-placed Lords realized what was wrong with the world. Like-minded individuals bonded with each other through shared values and morality, united only by a commonly upheld treaty which, in turn, rested on the new economy that nanotechnology allowed. How would society adapt if, suddenly, government became obsolete? With the Feed and the Matter Compilers able to create anything out of nothing, the entire economic and political underpinnings of the planet came undone, and people banded together into phyles. The Diamond Age is, fundamentally, about what would happen, or what might happen, if we really got nanotechnology working properly. It happened in Cryptonomicon, where he dove into the murky waters of cryptography and brought up brilliant gems, and it happened here, too. ![]() It happened in Snow Crash, where he was playing with the origins of language and the fundamental functioning of the human mind. He then writes about 200 pages of really awesome, meticulous world-building, with innovative ideas about, in the case of this book, the possibly uses of nanotechnology and its eventual social ramifications, and then goes, Oh, damn, I'm writing a story, and high-tails it to the end of the book, leaving the reader a little wind-blown and confused. ![]() ![]() I get the feeling that Stephenson's writing process goes something like this: ![]()
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