Week 9
Questions on Stephenson's Snow
Crash
1.
Read Pam Rosenthal's essay "Surfing History,Hacking Metaphor: Two or
Three
Ways to Know Yourself in Cyberspace" and Tracy Seneca's
essay
"The Power of Language in Snow
Crash and Babel 17."
Do you think the
GUI (the graphic user interface or the computer screen ) is
magical?
In
what sense is clicking on an icon and making a web page appear
similar
to
the way language has sometimes been used (in the sense of using a
name
in a magical way as in the invocation of
a god or goddess's name to make
something
happen)?
Explain briefly why or why not.
[
Here's an interesting link to the relationship between science
fiction
and
mythology which bears directly on the
above question.]
2.
I asked the first question because the problem of language is at
the very core
of
Stephenson's plot and is one of the most important themes of the
novel.
Describe
in your own words how the question of language figures in the
plot.
3.
Lessing, as we saw at the beginning of the course, made a sharp
division
between
verbal language and visual image. In Snow
Crash, Stephenson
refers,
for example, to the "tongue of Eden" and the
"language of Adam"
(p.278).
Describe the essential differences between this language and
language
in the ordinary sense as Lessing described it.
4.
On p.275, Stephenson mentions George Steiner and the distinction
he makes
between
relativists and universalists and then goes on to say that Lagos
"believed
that both schools of thought had essentially arrived at the same
place
by different lines of reasoning."(p.276) In this context,
explain what
the
term "nam-shub" means. Do you think there is more
convergence or more
divergence
in languages today? Do you think we'll ever be able to develop a
language
which -- simply through utterance -- could directly alter our
physical
reality?
Ftp your responses to our site by
Wed.
[ If you
are interested George Steiner's works, here are some reviews to
look up:
1.
Peter S. Leithart's review of Steiner's book
Real Presences(1989).
2.
A Bactra
review of Steiner's book In
Bluebeard's Castle(1971). ]