When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.

“Interesting. So the Sumerian language died out, but the Sumerian myths were somehow passed on in the new languages.” “Correct. Sumerian was used as the language of religion and scholarship by later civilizations, much as Latin was used in Europe during the Middle Ages. No one spoke it as their native language, but educated people could read it. In

This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world.

When Hiro learned how to do this, way back fifteen years ago, a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself. Now, that’s no longer possible. Software comes out of factories, and hackers are, to a greater or lesser extent, assembly-line workers. Worse yet, they may become managers who never get to write any code

“Inanna is the person that Juanita’s obsessed with.” “Yes, sir. She is hailed as a savior because ‘she brought the perfect execution of the me.’ ” “Execution? Like executing a computer program?” “Yes. Apparently, they are like algorithms for carrying out certain activities essential to the society. Some of them have to do with the workings of

“Egypt was a civilization of stone. They made their art and architecture of stone, so it lasts forever. But you can’t write on stone. So they invented papyrus and wrote on that. But papyrus is perishable. So even though their art and architecture have survived, their written records—their data—have largely disappeared.” “What about all those

A speech with magical force. Nowadays, people don’t believe in these kinds of things. Except in the Metaverse, that is, where magic is possible. The Metaverse is a fictional structure made out of code. And code is just a form of speech—the form that computers understand. The Metaverse in its entirety could be considered a single vast nam-shub,

Above him, in the house that owns the pool, a light has come on, and children are looking down at him through their bedroom windows, all warm and fuzzy in their Li’l Crips and Ninja Raft Warrior pajamas, which can either be flameproof or noncarcinogenic but not both at the same time. Dad is emerging from the back door, pulling on a jacket. It is a

Software development, like professional sports, has a way of making thirty-year-old men feel decrepit.