ABSTRACT
There is an exchange in Snow Crash that possibly exemplifies what Allard understood about the power of the Internet and the power to shape it. On May 26, 1995, Bill Gates wrote a pivotal internal memo called "The Internet Tidal Wave". There were major reorganizations going on, and in the midst of that Silverberg started the company's Windows Internet Division. Starting with a version of the Mosaic browser technology, Microsoft created Internet Explorer and began positioning it to unseat Netscape Navigator as the preeminent browser. Silverberg put it, "People have forgotten how to defend the castle". Before Bill Gates refocused Microsoft on the Internet, there was exactly one person in the Internet support team, according to John Ludwig, who ran the team. One of Eisler’s and Engstrom’s—particularly Engstrom’s—favorite pastimes at Microsoft seemed to be “boss killing.”. Engstrom freely admits to his boss killing habit (meaning getting them fired, of course).
