Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash delves into the themes of access to information and control through the usage of virtual realities. While some people might fear that technology produces an overflow of information, virtual realties offers its users connection to knowledge and people that would otherwise be impossible. In addition, the Metaverse within Snow Crash creates a world separate from reality that provides people with the ability to create avatars and decide on how people view one’s own personality. Virtual realities should continue to be developed and utilized to allow people access to massive amounts of information and provide users the capabilities of creating a unique persona.
Unlike common, everyday interactions, virtual realities enable …show more content…
Alanah Davis from the Journal of the Association for Information Systems describes the capabilities of virtual realities, “Metaverses provide virtual team members with new ways of managing and overcoming geographic and other barriers to collaboration. These environments have potential for rich and engaging collaboration” (Davis 2). Within Snow Crash, Metaverse provides an inclusive and usable virtual world to interact within. Hiro describes the accessibility of the Metaverse, “That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time. Add in another sixty million or so who can't really afford it but go there anyway, by using public machines, or machines owned by their school or their employer, and at any given time the Street is occupied by twice the population of New York City” (Stephenson 16). Even though people cannot always afford a computer, virtual …show more content…
Joan McComas from Virtual Environments in Clinical Psychology and Neuroscience details the benefits of virtual realities for children with disabilities, “The anonymity associated with communicating with other networked users within a virtual environment puts the child on an equal footing and provides a social outlet for children who might otherwise be isolated from their peers” (McComas 2). Virtual realities offer a higher quality of life than the one offered in reality. For example, Ng lives luxurious life in the Metaverse as a businessman even though in reality, society ostracizes Ng. Virtual realties offer an escape from the harshness of reality and allows people to experience another life that improves from the one offered by