Futurism

[unixronin]

It's 2007.  Where's my flying car, dammit?

No, Möller's ground-effect Jetsons personal flying saucer does not count.  Even if the control system would let you get it above ten feet altitude, it'd probably be almost uncontrollable out of ground effect, and I'll bet it's noisy as hell.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, Stephenson never stated a specific timeline or specific dates. But my best recollection is that there are references in the text of Snow Crash that place it no earlier than about 2030, and likely in the region of 20 to 30 years later than that. (I'd have to look up the text and find the specific passages referring to the origins of the burbclaves to be able to say more definitely than that.) There are also correlations and side-references between characters in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age that appear to indicate The Diamond Age takes place about 40-60 years after the events of Snow Crash. That gives us a likely estimated window of somewhere around 2070 - 2110 for the events of The Diamond Age.

Of course, someone with connections in the industry could always simply ask Neal Stephenson. :)