Snow Crash: Ways the Author Applies Principles of Programming to His Description and Interpretation of Sumerian History
In what ways does Neal Stephenson, the author of Snow Crash apply principles of programming to his description and interpretation of Sumerian history? What could ancient Sumerian history and computer programming possibly have to do with one another? Both, suggests Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash, deal with the phenomenon of human memory, language creation, comprehension, and recall. Ancient religions and computers alike make these human functions easier to understand, for both programming and myths of origins dramatize the birth of language. Long, long ago, according to Stephenson's novel, a kind of prototypical virus entered the world that changed the fundamental nature of human communication. Before, all human beings were able to understand one another, regardless of where they dwelled upon earth. This was because the primary functions of language, rather than being acquired, existed within the human brain on a kind of primordial level. Basic brain structures existed within the human mind, like software programs are encoded with basic functions-in the human mind, these basic components pertained the vital functions of life, like baking bread, like a start or stop function for a computer program. Only, in the human m
However, the themes of arrogance within the myth resonant within the world of the novel, where humans have utter confidence in their ability to control the world through technology. (Halloran, 2006)In the present world of Snow Crash, the virus still lives on, and has suddenly come into full fruition once again. Just like a computer, the virus can overload and wipe out a person's memory, or a computer's memory. This is the source for the drug and infection known as Snow Crash in street, hacker slang. The myth suggested that humanity built a tower to reach heaven, rather than wait for divine judgment, and were summarily punished by human arrogance. Incidentally, Sumerian is thought to be the world's primordial language by many linguistic scholars, hence Stephenson's likely adoption of this location as the mythological foundation of his novel. The viral infection that obliterates human and computer memory acts as a powerful challenge to this arrogance. Human brains are organisms, and their organic function and structure produce the methods by which humans remember and learn how to communicate. The novel makes a revolutionary connection between organic matter that stores human information, like the human brain, and computers. Ironically, the source of this 'blockage' was actually the cure for the original, mind-destroying virus. This virus was a derivation to the virus affecting the modern world of the novel, which erases the memory of computer hackers and computers alike. It asks provoking questions as to why human beings cannot communicate that make the similarities between human and computer devices seem eerie. In the original myth, humans lose the gift of universal communication when they try to build a tower to heaven, rather than to act in a moral fashion, as decreed by God. Hence the perpetuation of the Biblical myth of the Tower of Babel, or the tale that told the destruction of the world's one, unifying language. However, this binary code was interfered with, much like a virus can attack a computer program.
Common topics in this essay:
Snow Crash,
England Thailand,
Catholic Encyclopedia,
Tower Babel,
God Enki,
Incidentally Sumerian,
snow crash,
binary code,
human language,
human brain,
stephenson's novel,
tower babel,
vital functions,
human mind,
Neal Stephenson's,
Neal Stephenson,
myth tower babel,
ability communicate,
brain structures,
vital functions virus,
|
Acceptance Essays
