In reality they have turned out to be the opposite of prophetic. National governments are more powerful today, relative to corporations, than they were in 1992, when Snow Crash was published.<p>In the 90s, a lot of people thought that businesses would leverage networked computer technologies to disrupt governments. People thought the Internet would be a new medium of exchanging information and wealth, impossible for governments to monitor and regulate.<p>Does anyone think that anymore? What we see today--thanks to Edward Snowden and others--is that the Internet is thoroughly dominated by national governments. They have the best hackers and invest in the strongest technologies. For example it&#x27;s hard to think of a smarter tech company than Google, and the GCHQ picked their pocket easily with MUSCULAR. Rather that disrupting the government, core technology companies like AT&amp;T enthusiastically work with the government.