Tag Archives: Neal Stephenson

Language as a tool of power, control, and transformation

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I’m about halfway through Christopher Summerfield’s These Strange News Minds (How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means). Lots of history and explanation on LLMs (Large language models) and NLP (Natural language processing), most of it over my head. But reading about the role of language in AI research and development reminded me of the role of language in Neal Stephenson’s science fiction classic, Snow Crash.

[GPT 4o] In Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson explores language as a tool of power, control, and transformation, blending cyberpunk themes with linguistic theory and mythology.

1. Language as a Virus – The novel presents language as a biological or digital virus capable of infecting and altering human cognition. “Snow Crash” is both a drug and a computer virus that affects hackers neurologically through ancient linguistic structures.

2. Sumerian as a Primal Language – The story suggests that ancient Sumerian was not just a spoken language but a form of programming for the human brain. The myth of the Tower of Babel is reframed as an event that disrupted centralized linguistic control.

3. Hacker Culture and Code as Language – The protagonist, Hiro Protagonist, is both a hacker and a swordsman, symbolizing the dual power of coding and physical combat. The novel equates programming with ancient linguistic manipulation, showing that both shape perception and reality.

4. Linguistic Control and Subjugation – The antagonist, L. Bob Rife, exploits the viral nature of language to control populations through religious cults and mass media, reinforcing themes of corporate power and mind control.

5. Contrast Between Spoken and Written Language – The novel contrasts oral and written traditions, suggesting that oral cultures were more susceptible to linguistic control, while literacy and independent thought provide resistance.

Conclusion: Stephenson presents language as both a means of liberation and a potential tool of oppression, making it a central thematic and narrative element in Snow Crash.

  • “a form of programming for the human brain.”
  • “…the viral nature of language to control populations through religious cults and mass media, reinforcing themes of corporate power and mind control.”
  • “…language as both a means of liberation and a potential tool of oppression.”

Sounds all too familiar.

Polostan by Neal Stephenson

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I’ve read most of Neal Stephenson‘s novels and really enjoyed them. At least the early ones: Snow Crash (1992); Cryptonomicon (1999); The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver (2003); The Confusion (2004); The System of the World (2004); Anathem (2008); REAMDE (2011)

His latest novel, Polostan, arrived this morning.

(Amazon) “The first installment in Neal Stephenson’s Bomb Light cycle, Polostan follows the early life of the enigmatic Dawn Rae Bjornberg. Born in the American West to a clan of cowboy anarchists, Dawn is raised in Leningrad after the Russian Revolution by her Russian father, a party line Leninist who re-christens her Aurora. She spends her early years in Russia but then grows up as a teenager in Montana, before being drawn into gunrunning and revolution in the streets of Washington, D.C., during the depths of the Great Depression. When a surprising revelation about her past puts her in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where she is groomed as a spy by the organization that later becomes the KGB.

Set against the turbulent decades of the early twentieth century, Polostan is an inventive, richly detailed, and deeply entertaining historical epic, and the start of a captivating new series from Neal Stephenson.

I’d definitely call The Baroque Cycle historical novels. Same for much of Cryptonomicon. The Amazon description above reminds me of REAMDE, perhaps my favorite Stephenson novel.

When I opened the Amazon box, the first thing I noticed was how much smaller (number of pages) this new novel is. NS had no trouble cranking out thousand page books. I hope he has recaptured his earlier mojo.

Excerpts from his novels here.

Termination Shock

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Set in the near-ish future, Neal Stephenson’s latest novel (Termination Shock) charts a world gone haywire with the aftereffects of human-driven climate calamity. Like the last couple of novels I’ve read, it incorporated COVID into the storyline as well as the January 6th insurrection.

“…before you knew it there was a white guy in red-white-and blue war paint sacking the U.S. Capitol in what the media described as some kind of Viking getup but Rufus knew perfectly well was a Plains Indian-style bison headdress. And just like Comanches with their raids, those people didn’t stick around and try to plant their yellow rattlesnake flags on the Capitol dome. They just wandered off, having counted coup on democracy and taken a few cop scalps, and melted back into their nomadic trailer park encampments.

This excerpt reminded me of some of his descriptions in Snow Crash.