I just finished reading Neil Stephenson's third novel, Snow Crash. Set in a not-so-distant cyberpunk future, Snow Crash tells the story of the freelance hacker Hiro. Although published in 1992 much of the technology in the book is already showing up in our reality. I'm sure that Mr. Stephenson saw much of this coming in his research and decided to include it in his book. In the interest of not destroying the book for those who haven't read it I won't go into detail about the technology I found interesting. This is just a short list of Snow Crash Tech and its real life counterparts...

• The Metaverse -- SecondLife
• CIC Application "Earth" -- NASA WorldWind
• Armorgel -- d3o impact absorption material