Snow Crash

Snow Crash has been a really interesting book, unlike any other that I have ever read before. Hiro is the main character in the story and he spends most of his time in the metaverse. The metaverse is an online virtual reality community. Within this reality community you create an avatar which is an audiovisual body that you use to communicate within the metaverse. This book is supposed to predict the future of 2010 for our society and in some senses these ideas seem absurd but in other instances I wonder if we've already created a metaverse. With our instant messaging screen names you get to decide who you are, what your name is, and how you want to act when speaking to others. You can pretend to be anyone you desire and make others believe you are someone who you completely are not when not sitting in front of a computer. I guess in a way this is already a scary thought, even though it has not gone nearly as far as snow crash assumes it will.