It also was very pessimistic on technocratic solutions for the "good nurture" problem. Basically nothing can replace a real parent coaxing a self-expanding mind into beeing.
It also was very pessimistic on technocratic solutions for the "good nurture" problem. Basically nothing can replace a real parent coaxing a self-expanding mind into beeing.
He's pretty good at imagining it too - The Diamond Age was published in 1995, just as the Internet was beginning to take off, and yet it envisioned The Internet, videoconferencing, smart paper, drones, and a whole bunch of other technological innovations that didn't catch on for 15 years or so. Cryptonomicon was published 10 years before Bitcoin but fully described two of its biggest use-cases, remittances and digital gold. Snow Crash had the "America is good at only 4 things: music, movies, microcode, and high-speed pizza delivery" line in 1992, 20 years before it became true and right as the rest of the country was celebrating us becoming the sole superpower.
I've never read anything else quite like it, and honestly don't know what I think of it. Are all of Neal Stephenson's books like that?