Language comes in many forms, a dog's bark, a lion's roar or a baby's babbling. They are way of communicating to each other within the same species, granted you really can't understand a baby's babbling but it is a form of communication. Humans communicate differently from animals. Human language involves abstract vocabulary arbitrarily related to meanings, open-ended in its expressiveness and suitable for a wide range of purposes. Body language, gestures and context provide considerable information, without language our ability to express ourselves would be greatly diminished.

In Snow Crash, a novel by Neal Stephenson, language is used as a weapon in the form of a virus. It is not just any virus but one that specifically targets the language area of the brain. What's unique about Snow Crash is that it can be introduced by merely looking at a computer screen or injecting it as a drug. The virus once in your system 'triggers' a dormant area of your brain specifically ancient language called 'speaking in tongues'. To a normal person, 'speaking in tongues' sounds like nonsense however, others who are infected can understand them. The virus has a nice side effect which is it leaves the infected person susceptible to suggestions or in a 'zombie' state.

Stephenson uses four separate ideas and links them into one comprehensive and plausible theme of explaining how and where the Snow Crash virus originated. In this site we will explore those four ideas: the origin of language, the extinct Sumerian culture, the story of the Tower of Babel and the binary code of computers.