To preface this book review. For some reason, I wrote the original review in dutch. This here is the translated version of that review.

Snow Crash was a fun book to read with lots of interesting things happening in it that are now a reality for better or worse. It was quite enjoyable to read about how Neal imagined VR would work in that world.

In particularly the technical aspect of it because some of his creations would probably seem like impossibilities in his times but nowadays are not even high-end. This already happened in page 28 when he described how the VR glasses from Hiro worked.

By drawing the image seventy-two times a second, it can be made to move. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2k pixels on a side, it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive… —Neal Stephenson, Snow crash

He is just saying that Hiro’s VR glasses work on 72 frames per second at a 2k resolution. The specs are reasonably close to what we have today! For example, the Valve Index has two LCD 1440×1600 LCD screens that can run at max 144hz. This book was published in 1992 that is 32 years ago!

To get back to the review, in general the book was quite interesting in describing how communities and governments operated in that world. Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong (not affiliated with China) to the Central Intelligence Cooperation (CIC) and also the couriers where Y.T. was part of.

The concept of a “Gargoyle” was also quite interesting. Someone is continuously connected to the internet collecting information and selling this to the CIC. It makes me think of people who are addicted to their phones to an extreme level and also of people who are continuously looking for side hustles. They might be physical with you but mentally they are completely somewhere else.

You’re in this place.There’s other people all around you, but they don’t understand you and you don’t understand them, but people do a lot of pointless babbling anyway.In order to stay alive, you have to spend all day every day doing stupid meaningless work.And the only way out of it is to quit, cut loose,take a flyer,and go off into the wicked world,where yo will be swallowed up and never heard off again.