The Future and the Now: Navigable Space in Snow Crash

Two hackers—one a samurai-swordsman-genius, the other a mutant-psychotic-juggernaut, race on virtual motorcycles in cyberspace at speeds measuring in the hundreds of thousands of miles per hour while simultaneously slashing at each other with virtual swords and avoiding large concrete poles holding up a monorail overhead. Meanwhile, the samurai hacker, named Hiro Protagonist, tells the other the shared history of their fathers’ escape from a Japanese POW camp during WWII. The pair soon discover a curious circumstance: if either’s father had not existed, both would have died, and neither son would have been born. Through the course of this melodramatic epiphany, each hacker is still trying to calculatedly kill the other while speeding at velocities not possible in reality, but completely possible in the futuristic world of cyberspace.
Despite the humorous juvenility of the circumstances, this event in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash is only one of many that have deep significance for several theoretical frameworks discussed in class. One of the most significant items in the plot, the existence of the Metaverse, relies especially on Manovich’s thoughts on navigable space, the ability for users to process data by means of a movable, camera-like perspective through data as represented by three-dimensional objects. The qualities of Stephenson’s Metaverse follow Manovich’s basic premises; however, Stephenson introduces problematics which question some of Manovich’s arguments about the nature of navigable space.
Manovich first argues that, in the course of the development of navigable space in computer use, space itself has become a media type. The use of space is a new aesthetic, no different from video, audio, or textual art, and one entirely unique to new media. Stephenson agrees entirely with this basic premise of Manovich’s essay. The Metaverse, the operative internet-like navigable space in Snow Crash, is a medium of art, where the artist is the hacker. For example, Hiro Protagonist prides himself on being able to create an entirely unique avatar, fully capable of portraying any expression his human face might make and finely detailed to match his every characteristic. He similarly looks down on the users who resort to standard shelf-avatars, the “Brandys” and “Clints,” Metaverse philistines who merely take up room in the crowded main Street in the Metaverse. Similarly, Juanita, a fellow hacker, wrote the codes for faces in the Metaverse to be so precise that an attentive observer could pick up the “vapors of nuance” of emotion, much like real physical interaction. Though other hackers, including Hiro, scoffed at such minor attention to detail, Hiro later admits that this beautiful depiction of facial expression is what makes business in the Metaverse so popular.
Manovich also argues that the basic way to handle data in navigable space is in representations of data as three-dimensional objects with which the user can interact. Stephenson corresponds with the hypercard, a virtual representation of a small card that, when transferred between hands in the Metaverse, transfers all of the data contained within it to the other’s computer. Also, inside L. Bob Rife’s huge Metaverse complex, color-coded glowing webs represent his huge international cable network. This image gives eerie life to the concept of the World Wide Web, but instead of a network free for all, the magnate (or the spider) L. Bob Rife controls it. Still, it is evident that Stephenson’s Metaverse brings Manovich’s idea of data in navigable space to life.
However, one of Stephenson’s basic theses is completely counter to Manovich. The virus Snow Crash, the bitmap that destroys the brain of Da5id Meier, is data in code, its most raw form. The strength of the Snow Crash virus is that it refuses to be represented three-dimensionally; this way, it is able to circumvent the rational aspects of the brain to reach the most primal centers of language and destroy Da5id without him ever knowing what is going on. The virus of Asherah is a similar code whose power is its ability to skate around the rational language centers of the brain to promote irrationality. Like a virus both in cyberspace and reality, the cult of Asherah spreads from human to human, wrapping itself around the brainstem like a serpent, and the careful safeties of the rational brain—its abilities to interpret ingoing and outgoing information and manipulate it much like an object in three-dimensional space—are powerless to stop it.
Also, Manovich argues that, instead of optic and systematic, cyberspace is haptic and aggregate. Basically, this means that, instead of being a gestalt medium weighing all space within it equally, cyberspace is really the interaction of important objects on a static—and thus unimportant—background. Manovich explains this as the result of the difficulties in processing second-by-second 3-D rendering; it is much simpler for a computer to process the actions of a static background that does not “know” that the user is there, then to constantly process the minor interactions between user and background. Stephenson, again, looks like he agrees with this premise. The vast majority of the Metaverse is a gigantic, static ball on which real estate can be built. Avatars see each other, but there is no medium between them, affecting their actions against each other; indeed, avatars can just pass right through each other if they so desire. This is one of Manovich’s arguments against the systematic concept of cyberspace—no medium, or air (which necessitates the constant interaction between background and user, as well as between user and user), is programmed, so cyberspace must be aggregate. Stephenson’s Metaverse likewise has no air, and thus follows Manovich’s arguments against an aggregate cyberspace.
Yet Stephenson simultaneously challenges this argument, though in a way Manovich might expect. Though the majority of the Metaverse operates in the way Manovich might expect, the Black Sun, a haven for hackers and true operators of the system, operates much more like reality, where interaction between avatars is governed by physical rules, such as the inability for people to pass through each other. Indeed, the goal of the hackers designing the Metaverse was to eventually perfectly simulate reality, which is optic and systematic. For example, when Hiro wrote the rules governing swordplay, he put a loophole in the coding of the Metaverse that allows the sword to cut through walls. Normally, Hiro admits, this would be impossible, because walls in the Metaverse aren’t governed by physical rules; they’re representations of impenetrability to protect information inside virtual houses of data. However, the interaction between the supposed static background and the active user of the sword can actually grant the user entry, because the hacker who wrote the rules intended it to.
This, like mentioned above, is a hole in Manovich’s argument that he foresees. Manovich writes, “the users can modify the default settings and use the tools to create the opposite of what the default values suggest […] a reaction against the anticommunal and discrete nature of American society, an attempt to compensate for the much discussed disappearance of traditional community by creating virtual ones.” Stephenson interprets this as saying that, though the default of the Metaverse suggests an aggregate universe, in order to form a traditional, lifelike community—such as in the Black Sun—the hackers rebel and strive to create an optic and systematic cyberspace, one disparate from the anticommunal anarchical government system currently in place in the world in Snow Crash.
It is important, however, to remember that Snow Crash is fictional. Stephenson’s engagements of the arguments presented by Manovich do not have any empirical evidence behind them; he merely believes that, in a future world, this type of Metaverse may exist. He’s engaging with Manovich on a theoretical level. Because of this, neither author can be said to be the “right” one, so each author’s theories complicate the understanding of the other’s, introducing problematic and questioning each other’s arguments. Another important distinction is that Manovich is describing what is, and Stephenson is describing what may be. Manovich’s arguments describe how cyberspace is functioning now, in such games as Doom and Myst, as well as in 3-D art such as The Forest and Legible City; Stephenson lets his imagination loose and charts out how humans may change the state of cyberspace in the future, still with some of the limitations Manovich proposes but simultaneously striving against them. It is important, as we go onto the future of cyberspace, that we work with Manovich’s ideas but also keep Stephenson’s ideas in mind, so we can further explore the huge potential of navigable space.

Thanks for reading!
--Dan Ricker