Cryptonomicon

Over at Volokh the topic is the greatest sci fi book ever.

Part of my fascination with the book is how it traces out so carefully a theme begun in the author's earlier Snow Crash -- what the "end game" would look like in jurisdictional competition. Can you find a jurisdiction that allows you to escape from everybody else's regulation -- a sort of Delaware for everything, including data protection? How might this work?

Of course there are all kinds of little off-shore places where you can pretty much do what you want, but they don't provide much help if the US Marines come calling. What you would need is an infrastructure. Normally that requires taxpayers, and interest groups, and trial lawyers, and before you know it you're not doing what you want.

But suppose you could get your hands on a whole bunch of gold, or something . . .? As they say, go read the whole thing.

Comments

[Roland]

I don't know if you've read Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" as well, but the theme you note in Snow Crash basically reaches its climax in that book. It's not as self-referential as Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle are (i.e. it doesn't feel like part of a whole) but the way that the themes of Snow Crash are expanded in it are interesting and logical. Not his greatest novel but the connections keep you interested.

[Sponge Bob Spoogy Pants]

Actually I read Diamond Age as a sort of riposte to Gibson's Neuromancer and the generic nihilism of cyberpunk, in the same way as but gentler than Forever War was a response to Starship Troopers. Stephenson is suggesting to all you post-adolescent too cool to be bothered geeks out there that principles and social contracts do matter, and determine whether your tribe survives.