Notes on "The Diamond Age"

After finishing The Diamond Age I have to say that I really enjoyed it. Hopefully I'm not the only one, but judging from last week's in-class discussion, I may be one of the few who did.

What fascinated me about the text was Stephenson's blending of different cultural idenitifications with mixed results. For example, including the technology of binary code, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and the trickster figure of Coyote is no easy feat. I found myself constantly trying to wrap my brain around the technology as I simultaneously tried to recall my knowledge of mythology and culture. Is Stephenson, like Pessl, perhaps expecting too much of readers? I'd have to say that Stephenson grounds his allusions within the context of the world he's created. Unlike Pessl, Stephenson does not bombard the reader with empty allusions, but does expect the reader to keep up with the twists and turns of the textual digressions that parallel both the structure of the Victorian novel and that of the Primer.

As with last week, I found myself interested in the discussion of race and class. The society that Stephenson has created is a world in which travel is quick and convenient, which would seem to suggest the breaking down of race and class barriers. Yet the opposite seems to be true. All of this technology appears to continue the trend of marginalization. What I observed from the text is that technology becomes a tool of control. The Victorians manipulate technology in order to keep their elevated social status. This is nothing new. As we can easily recall from high school history, the British Empire was quite the powerhouse. Except in the case of the text, imperialism/colonization is has less to do with militaristic warfare and more with technological warfare. It is the lower classes who depend on the technology developed by the upper class. Technology, in this case, is a tool of colonization/imperialism.

Finally, I really have to wonder about technology and family. I keep thinking of the African proverb, "It takes a village to raise a child." In the world of Stephenson's novel (and in our own world), how do we define family? In the text, we see three girls--Fiona, Elizabeth, and Nell--all given the primer. Each girl has a different family structure and all three have vastly different fates. I'm incredibly interested in exploring this seeming-inexplicable tie between technology and family.