Passages from The Diamond Age

I've always loved copying favorite passages from books. Here are a few I'd like to share from my current read:

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.


Now nanotechnology had made nearly anything possible, and so the cultural role in deciding what should be done with it had become far more important than imagining what could be done with it. (31)


It was always foggy in the Leased Territories, because all of the immunocules in the air served as nuclei for the condensation of water vapor. If you stared carefully into the fog and focused on a point inches in front of your nose, you could see it sparkling, like so many microscopic searchlights, as the immunocules swept space with lidar beams... The sparkling of tiny lights was the evidence of microscopic dreadnoughts hunting each other implacably through the fog, like U-boats and destroyers in the black water of the North Atlantic. (52)


The trees were giants, rising branchless to far above their heads, the trunks aglow with moss... They passed through the remains of an abandoned timber town, half small clapboard buildings and half moss-covered and rust-streaked mobile homes. Through their dirty windows, faded signs were dimly visible, stenciled THIS HOUSEHOLD DEPENDS ON TIMBER MONEY. Ten-foot saplings grew up through cracks in the streets. Narrow hedges of blueberry shrubs and blackberry canes sprouted from the rain gutters of houses, and gigantic old cars, resting askew on flat and cracked tires, had become trellises for morning glories and vine maples. (340)


It is their view that one day, instead of Feeds terminating in matter compilers, we will have Seeds that, sown on the earth, will sprout up into houses, hamburgers, spaceships, and books -- that the Seed will develop inevitably from the Feed, and that upon it will be founded a more highly evolved society. (348)

Photo by J. Steuben