In what ways does Neal Stephenson, the author of Snow Crash apply principles of programming to his description and interpretation of Sumerian history?
             What could ancient Sumerian history and computer programming possibly have to do with one another? Both, suggests Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash, deal with the phenomenon of human memory, language creation, comprehension, and recall. Ancient religions and computers alike make these human functions easier to understand, for both programming and myths of origins dramatize the birth of language. Long, long ago, according to Stephenson's novel, a kind of prototypical virus entered the world that changed the fundamental nature of human communication. Before, all human beings were able to understand one another, regardless of where they dwelled upon earth. This was because the primary functions of language, rather than being acquired, existed within the human brain on a kind of primordial level.
             Basic brain structures existed within the human mind, like software programs are encoded with basic functions-in the human mind, these basic components pertained the vital functions of life, like baking bread, like a start or stop function for a computer program. Only, in the human mind, these functions were called me. Like computers have a binary code, which is common to all computers unlike higher-level or acquired programming computer languages, human beings too had binary language through which they could all communicate, without learning. This parallel in the novel's futuristic world reflects Stephenson's presumption that human language is a vital component of human, organic life, just as without a binary code, what we consider modern computing would not exist.
             However, this binary code was interfered with, much like a virus can attack a computer program. Unfortunately, a virus afflicted, first the ancient Sumers and took away these vital binary components. T...