One of the things I found most interesting about Snow Crash was its treatment of information. Clearly in this world information, or “intel” abounds. The desire for information takes precedence over privacy, as exemplified by Hiro’s experience with the Mob, described at the very beginning of the novel, “he's in their database now...retinal patterns, DNA, void graph fingerprints, foot prints, palm prints, wrist prints, every fucking part of the body that had wrinkles on it and digitized it into their computer" (6). This information typically not help private by whoever took record of it. You either need cash or clearance to access any given piece, but once you have those things, the information you can expose yourself to is pretty unlimited, and accessible, as evidenced by Hiro’s description of the Gargoyles. “You think they’re talking to you,” he explains “but they’re actually poring over the credit record of some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model of airplanes plying overhead” (125).
I found this reminiscent of the net in “Stars in my Pocket.” Access to the huge database of information is more widespread in Delany’s world than in Snow Crash, but for those who can access it, the scale of the information seems to be just as broad. However, the implications of these huge collections of data were different in the two novels. In Delany’s novel, being exposed to such absurd quantities of information seemed to make any given piece of information arbitrary. Since it was so obvious that any given person knew such a small proportion of the total information, they didn’t really think of facts as objective things, rather they’re thought of as on the same level as poetry. The interpretation of information was more important than the information itself. But in “Snow Crash,” information is power, and money. Hiro supports himself by collecting “intel” and collecting royalties whenever anyone pays to access it. Even the most inane of conversations have the potential to bring in the big bucks. In The Black Sun he overhears a screenwriter complaining about a director who wanted to put a bazooka in a movie. After Hiro puts the conversation into the Library “a hundred struggling screenwriters will call this conversation up, listen to it over and over until they’ve got it memorized, paying Hiro for the privilege” (65).
The obsession with information even bleeds into the narrative of the novel. The first two pages are rife with metaphor. “His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachno-fiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books. To me, this goes beyond world building and screams “Look! I know so much that I can use the properties of activated charcoal and napalm in similes!” Everything is cross-linked and referenced the way that Hiro links up the information he puts in the library.