In reality they have turned out to be the opposite of prophetic. National governments are more powerful today, relative to corporations, than they were in 1992, when Snow Crash was published.
In the 90s, a lot of people thought that businesses would leverage networked computer technologies to disrupt governments. People thought the Internet would be a new medium of exchanging information and wealth, impossible for governments to monitor and regulate.
Does anyone think that anymore? What we see today--thanks to Edward Snowden and others--is that the Internet is thoroughly dominated by national governments. They have the best hackers and invest in the strongest technologies. For example it's hard to think of a smarter tech company than Google, and the GCHQ picked their pocket easily with MUSCULAR. Rather that disrupting the government, core technology companies like AT&T enthusiastically work with the government.
