>>20934719
Also wanted to add but forgot about it since the book also forgets about it: Stephenson sets up near-future America as a hellscape destroyed bny AI-dominated social media. Describes vast swaths of America (Ameristan/Ameristani) as having entire populations "check out" of reality and subsist entirely on memes delivered to them by AI curators, which informs their lives and realities. It seems like he did this to take a swipe at middle Americans without much regard for his own pet characters, since they, without a shred of irony, do the EXACT same thing... but they subscribe to the "right" curators and the "right" memes. Then goes on to describe the process of waking up as a brain in a jar, in a virtual world, as if this virtual existence didn't have some parallel to the hell he described on planet Earth. So, essentially, everyone in the future stops using natural appendages to perceive the world, but some are good and righteous (the super-liberal, super-rich, neurodivergant techies) and some are stinky and evil (rural middle class white Americans). Weird that Stephenson went so far out of his way to describe and shit on Iowans for example when in the world he set up, some place like Baltimore would be much more interesting to see. I'm sure black Americans in the Stephenverse are dealing just fine with AI-memes taking over reality? But he drops the description of "Ameristan" and then never uses it in the story afterwards... Also would have been nice to see more about what the fuck people do when the afterlife is just another retirement scheme? People literally "tuning in" to watch afterlife adventures like it was Twitch dot TV, wouldn't that really fuck with you? And notable was the overall theme that only the super rich are worth talking about... the "afterlife processes" take trillions to run and at one point a character just has "money bots" make more money to run this shit. Insane. Really, really shit the bed with this one.