What is the connection between Snow Crash and The Diamond Age? The Primer is designed to react to its owner's environment and teach them what they need to know to survive and develop. Every battalion had their own community building and library. Until the end of the last Ice Age around 11,000 B.C., all humans on all continents were still living as Stone Age hunter/gatherers. Seems some artists do not care about the tidy wrap up. Dr. X sends Hackworth to North America to join the Drummers, a group that uses orgiastic sex to create a distributed human network that endlessly grows as more people get infected with their particles via sex; this network is needed to create the Seed. All of this is staggeringly inventive and meticulously detailed, but, lacking a coherent plot and set forth in an by Why is a "TeX point" slightly larger than an "American point"? Rice was the basis for our society. Blume knows the way kids and teens speak, but her two female leads are less credible as they reach adulthood. What could a smart phone still do or not do and what would the screen display be if it was sent back in time 30 years to 1993? Remember that a key part of the Primer - kept secret by Finkle-McGraw - was that the book was intended to be "subversive." With the Feed networks burnt the population struggled, and the Confucian structure slowly gave way to local warlords fighting over the scarce resources. Talented nano-engineer John Hackworth designs an interactive book, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, intended to function as both parent and teacher. A little mound with a small palace was built in the middle of the island that served both as her residence, and as the host of the central governing body. out of the kitchen on silk slippers and gave Hackworth his own tumbler YA scifi novel where kids escape a boarding school, in a hollowed out asteroid, What PHILOSOPHERS understand for intelligence? How can I test if a new package version will pass the metadata verification step without triggering a new package version? Diamonds, gold, and imperialist intervention (18701902), Afrikaner and African politics in the Cape, Reconstruction, union, and segregation (190229), Black, Coloured, and Indian political responses, The intensification of apartheid in the 1930s, Corruption charges against deputy president Zuma, Economic problems, social discontent, Nkandla scandal, and the death of Mandela, Controversy: the Gupta family, Nkandla, and corruption charges revisited, Which Country Is Larger By Population? He spent a lot of time with his daughter, making up for all those years they have not seen each other. At the bottom were 4) merchants. Using 3D printing and robotics technology, Diamond Age is building a suite of 26 end-of-arm robotic tools to offset 55% of the manual labor required to build a new home, reducing the construction . Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who dont share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and Judes race was undetermineddeserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood thats revealed slowly over the course of the book. highest status in the Confucian hierarchy. rev2023.4.17.43393. People flocked from near and far to cultivate and multiply the Seeds, small hands working diligently to scatter them across the land. He was cordially invited to sit at the table of Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw, who subtly hinted that it would be of great benefit for all parties, if he could spend most of his time outside of New Atlantis territory. Yet I don't think I ever truly understood the story, and certainly not the ending. Is Miss Matheson from Diamond Age, YT from Snow Crash? Okay, here's what this Stephenson guy did with his novel. Nell eventually grows up and becomes the leader of a large group of thousands of Chinese girls that also were raised on similar magical books that help you be a free thinker and rebel. The story is about rich foreigners and poor Chinese people. Except for the fact that it lacked an ending. "The Victorian system used Darwinian techniques to create killers adapted to their prey, which was elegant and effective but led to the creation of killers that were simply too bizarre to have been thought up by humans, just as humans designing a world never would have thought up the naked mole rat. Although, I'd thought that removing that aspect was Hackworth's alteration that he slipped in when he was ordered to mass-produce it. 7 yr. ago Miranda was grasping at straws to contact Nell. Quiz, Match the Country with Its Hemisphere Quiz. They raise their children to believe in that codebut their children believe it for entirely different reasons." "They believe it," the Constable said, "because they have been . The rich Victorians and Japanese sell Matter Converter nanotechnology to the poor Chinese via something called The Feed. The years pass by at a fast and steamy clip in Blumes latest adult novel (Wifey, not reviewed; Smart Women, 1984) as two friends find loyalties and affections tested as they grow into young women. To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers. Rice was the and our As if the last ten pages were cut off. Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professionsas an architect, painter, actor and lawyerand struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. South Africa experienced a transformation between 1870, when the diamond rush to Kimberley began, and 1902, when the South African War ended. I find it strange to paint the Seed as a Chinese/Confuscianist ideal. It was just how people in the future entertain themselves. The rise of the Afrikaner Bond and new laws affecting franchise qualifications and taxes also stimulated more-vigorous Black participation in electoral politics after 1884. So the Mouse army, can be thought of as the combination of the best elements of both cultures/worlds. Why would Hackworth want the Mouse Army to seek Nell to rule them? When Hofmeyr threw his support behind Cecil Rhodes in 1890, he enabled Rhodes to become prime minister of the Cape; their alliance stemmed from a mutual desire for northward economic expansion. Then, leadership given by the scholars/bureaucrat would have been meaningful. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Not the answer you're looking for? New political and educational bodies came into existence in the eastern Cape, as did the first Black newspapers and Black-controlled churches. Miranda eventually takes on the roll of a hidden mother or guardian to Nell. Nobody knew where they came from, or who sowed them, but they bloomed like the desert after a sudden rain, growing food, shelter, medicine, and other fundamental items. [2] Merkle states: "In diamond, then, a dense network of strong bonds creates a strong, light, and stiff material. The part that is confusing me is as follows: . After a few years, however, Fiona spent more and more time with his new friends, and her fathers presence became somewhat uncomfortable. But then other stories come into play and confusion sets in - at least in my head it did! Stephensons body of work has proven influential in contemporary discussions about technology and power. Has Dynabook inspired Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age? She finally finds that in Miranda and even though we don't get to see the relationship play out, this ends the device driving the novel. I first read this ~10 years ago and just re-read it as someone reminded me that it predicts the future of reading. . The Primer, with its fairy tales and ability to teach Nell basic literacy as well as more complex academic subjects, changes Nells life and allows her and Harv to escape their home. I remember that part of Dr. X explanation, but it didn't make a lot of sense to me. The white population in the Cape numbered 240,000 by the mid-1870s and constituted about one-third of the colonys population. Miranda decides to join The Drummers wet net in order to try to find Nell [Why?]. The mass produced Primer has a real opportunity for abuse through propaganda, which is more difficult for the real Primer. How can I detect when a signal becomes noisy? RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015. Maybe I misunderstood? In the extremely globalized future depicted in the novel, these cultural divisions have largely supplanted the system of nation-states that divides the world today. I'm abandoning this book at 50% - one star because I think I deserve the credit for slogging through it, though. Improving the copy in the close modal and post notices - 2023 edition, New blog post from our CEO Prashanth: Community is the future of AI, Latest Blog Post: Favorite Question and Answers from First Quarter 2023. Parking lots and chaos.. The conflict between Afrikaners and English speakers led to the establishment of the Afrikaner Bond in 1879. THE DIAMOND AGE. Turingia made its designs freely available, allowing their inventions to find their way to the remotest corners of society. Meanwhile, his wife divorces him, but he maintains contact with his daughter through storytelling in her Primer. development, all of them bowing to Nell, not with a Chinese bow or a How can I make inferences about individuals from aggregated data? The Diamond Age is characterized by two intersecting, almost equally-developed story lines: the social downfall of the nanotech engineer designer of the Primer, John Percival Hackworth, who makes an illegal copy of the Primer for his own young daughter, Fiona, and Nell's education through her independent work with the Primer after her brother Harv steals it from Hackworth. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. . The Seed is decentralized while the Feed is totally centralized. All of the girls (including Nell) have taken part in this activity in a highly orderly fashion. "The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. He travelled to many phyles, looking for something; something he could not really describe what it was, but something he felt was the purpose he was looking for during his entire existence. Caitlin, on the other hand, lives part of the year with her wealthy mother Phoebe, whos just moved to Albuquerque, and summers with her father Lamb, equally affluent, on the Vineyard. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. But it will take some time. ". Realizing this, Hackworth also realized, for the first time, that he It was the destruction of our society. I feel my understanding of the Drummers is a bit off. I agree. noticing tricks than most other people in the world. Snow Crash is without question the biggest SF novel of the 1990s. There's a kind of girl power aspect to it all that's especially nice. Hanya Yanagihara. Stephenson is undoubtedly a good writer. Hackworth emerges and goes on a quest with his daughter to discover the engineer behind the work on the Seed, only to learn that he is that engineer, the Alchemist. feels more like an "agrarian vs industrial" than "disseminated vs centralized" contrast to me. 687 views, 16 likes, 0 loves, 4 comments, 4 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Khanta: Mel K - Andrew Sorchini - Preparing for the Global Pivot Away from. Why don't objects get brighter when I reflect their light back at them? Molecular nanotechnology is omnipresent in the novel's world, generally in the form of Matter Compilers and the products that come out of them. I like it a lot more than Snow Crash, though not quite as much as Cryptonomicon. blood diamond, also called conflict diamond, as defined by the United Nations (UN), any diamond that is mined in areas controlled by forces opposed to the legitimate, internationally recognized government of a country and that is sold to fund military action against that government. Nicole Galland, by Dr. X was right after all. Is that an expectation of coherent plotting in your back pocket? And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. It only takes a minute to sign up. Is Miss Matheson from Diamond Age, YT from Snow Crash? He did say that the Primer did not turn out quite the way they had expected it to. Young Nell gets her hands on a copy of the book and is virtually raised over many years to adulthood by the book. Neal Stephenson Rebel groups are working underground to create the Seed, a native, alternate form of nanotechnology. Lacking the presence of a real person, the Han girls develop loyalty to each other (including Nell, another user of the Primer) rather than adopting the Confucian ethics that dominate in the Celestial Kingdom. I think the change done in the Mouse Primer, was to make them loyal to the first Primer, to Princess Nell. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. As Turingia became more and more prosperous, its relationship with Atlantis turned less and less friendly. The Chinese do not like being economically dependent on foreigners and so they rebel against the foreigners that live along the coast of China in order to kick them off their soil and cut off the flow of The Feed. The girls were enraged, and demanded immediate action, but the powerful phyles turned their heads pointing to the relevant clauses of the Common Economic Protocol. Neal Stephenson, quote from The Diamond Age. And unlike Diamond Age, the ending of Snow Crash didn't make me feel like hunting down Stephenson and beating him with the manuscript until he coughed up the real ending..;-) Un-fun endings--Stephenson's Bane (Score: 4) by C. E. Sum on Friday September 17, 1999 @01:56AM Homepage Journal. Different rates of development on different continents, from 11,000 B.C. So the girls will become Leaders of a new way, with out the foot deforming etc, but with the use of the seed. The novel's neo-Victorian setting, as well as its narrative form, particularly the chapter headings, suggest a relation to the work of Charles Dickens. National governments have vanished, leaving society divided into enclaves along ethnic, cultural, and ideological lines, the most dynamic of which are the new-Victorian Atlanteans of coastal China. Alternative ways to code something like a table within a table? Now set the book in a future Shanghai, in a world where nanotechnology makes material needs obsolete, at least in theory And voila: The Diamond Age. The last 50 pages or so make zero sense given the rest of the novel, and the ending itself seems more like just a stop rather than an ending. Now that you point it out, though, it really makes quite a bit of sense. I have just finished rereading Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age for about the fourth time and am still confused about the ending. Now, here's your complementary CS patch. New Atlantiss neo-Victorians are one of the most powerful phyles due to their control of nanotechnology delivered by the Feed, a centralized system that delivers subsistence-level food and goods to the have-nots (thetes) and a high standard of living to elites. She joins the Drummers, whose work on the Seed may allow her to unmask Nells identity and location. Why is the Seed in "Diamond Age" associated with Confucianism? In 1996, it won both the Hugo and Locus Awards,[1] and was shortlisted for the Nebula and other awards.[1]. I feel as though that's a trite thing to say, but I'm not talking about the overall story, I'm talking about the way each sentence is crafted. I have to admit, this is a dense read sometimes in the way that hard sci-fi can be: Glazing over at "tech speak tech speak tech speak." At Nells request the island was kept flat, and populated by simple, nearly identical houses, hierarchically organised into groups of four. The Boxer Rebellion was lead by The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, and was anti-foreign. Up to about halfway through, I was in love with this book, but then Hackworth goes to the Drummers and we skip 10 years, and my thoughts are like this: if you as a writer didn't care about those 10 years enough to write about them, why do I care enough to read them? Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. Chapter-by-chapter summaries and multiple sections of expert analysis, The ultimate resource for assignments, engaging lessons, and lively book discussions. We know only a few of the oldest girls were subjected to this because they are the ones being carried by the army on the march. It would only be natural that the central plot of the book should focus around the Turing test for artificial intelligence. British colonies, Boer republics, and African kingdoms all came under British control. Richer finds in dry diggings in 1870 led to a large-scale rush. That's right, it's very similar, except instead of nicotine, this will imbue you with knowledge equivalent to a bachelor's degree in computer science. It has taken me a while to figure out what I think of this book, and I'm still not entirely sure. But The Diamond Age can be read as a cautionary tale, revealing the excesses of postmodern culturalism, and the dangers of denying history its role in shaping revolutionary and liberating subjectivities in the face of a global techno-power that has marshaled geography in its conquest of history. Large patches of the woods were chopped, and little huts were built at the place of King Coyotes palace. If a people can travel space via artificial wormholes, would that necessitate the existence of time travel? Although some white diggers continued to work as overseers or skilled labourers, from the mid-1880s the workforce consisted mainly of Black migrant workers housed in closed compounds by the companies (a method that had previously been used in Brazil). The story is very complex and I think I might have parts mixed up. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. 6.0 stars. A fully automated simulation that was not only able to mimic the laws of physics, but also generated objects and agents that matched the storyline both in content and mood. if it pleases the court, I can also, Hackworth said, most Welcome back. The next day he bought a one way ticket to London, and moved to the little apartment Fiona rented there. her four toy friends) onto archetypal folk tales stored in the primer's database. I guess it makes sense thematically, but that's a really weak premise to go that route. The very beginning of the book, where Lord Finkle-McGraw and John Percival Hackworth discuss the idea for the primer, made clear that it was intended to produce not just educated girls but subversive ones who can think for themselves and take charge. Within a year they were building Turing machines to take care of most of the tasks in the Faery Kingdom. Over the years, Nell interacts with the Primer. Her epitaph said: Miranda, the Mother of Turingia. The period also witnessed the first political organizations among Coloureds in the Cape and Indians in Natal and the Transvaal. Neal Stephenson The book contains descriptions of various exotic technologies, such as the chevaline (a mechanical horse that can fold up and is light enough to be carried one-handed), and forecasts the use of technologies that are in development today, such as smart paper that can show personalized news headlines. Content Warning: The source novel includes sexual abuse and violence, misogynistic slurs as characterization, and physical violence. Watching her mince away, Hackworth was only mildly Children were laughing, parents were smiling, and grandparents were crying of joy, as they saw their hard work bearing fruit. Its free and takes less than 10 seconds! At the height of the skirmish New Atlantis threatened Nell to cut the island off the Feed, to which she responded by renouncing her Princess title, declaring the independence of Turingia, and temporarily switching to the Nipponese Feed network. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. scholar-bureaucrats at the top, because they had the knowledge and wisdom to maintain social order; followed by 2) farmers, because Now you can see what each connection gives you. Although, I'd thought that removing that aspect was Hackworth's alteration that he slipped in when he was ordered to mass-produce it. In similar fashion, Wizard 0.2 creates an impressive light show as it apparently processes data, but it is then revealed that the computer's decisions are in fact made by King Coyote himself. Miranda grows attached to Nell, so she tries to find Nell in real space. The diamond zone was simultaneously claimed by the Orange Free State, the South African Republic, the western Griqua under Nicolaas Waterboer, and southern Tswana chiefs. The buzz words had to be something that would palliate the hyperactive endocrine glands of 13 year old males. Sensing the awkwardness of the situation, Hackworth took his bowler, and made a quick exit. Neal Stephenson, by As far as the overall story, there's a lot to like, plenty of varied characters, several story lines that are more closely woven than one might originally think, and plenty of action. 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Out quite the way kids and teens speak, but her two female leads are less credible they.