The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson

Description

From the author of Snow Crash, the story of an engineer who creates a device to raise a girl capable of thinking for herself reveals what happens when a young girl of the poor underclass obtains the device.

Editorial Review

John Percival Hackworth is a nanotech engineer on the rise when he steals a copy of “A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer” for his daughter Fiona. The primer is actually a super computer built with nanotechnology that was designed to educate Lord Finkle-McGraw's daughter and to teach her how to think for herself in the stifling neo-Victorian society. But Hackworth loses the primer before he can give it to Fiona, and now the “book” has fallen into the hands of young Nell, an underprivileged girl whose life is about to change.