Gibson has been pretty adamant that interpreting the Sprawl setting as a dystopia is not quite understanding it: the Sprawl is a quality of life upgrade for a lot of Earth's citizens today.
Neal Stephenson gives a spicier take on this in Snowcrash: "... the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity."
Neal Stephenson gives a spicier take on this in Snowcrash: "... the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity."
I don't get it. What does being Pakistani have to do with anything?
Stephenson is referencing the effective slavery that is brick kilns in the subcontinent in particular [1]. It also applies to India and possibly Bangladesh.
