Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson – Kindle Edition

After the Internet, what came next
Enter the Metaverse – cyberspace home to avatars and software daemons, where anything and just about everything goes. Newly available on the Street – the Metaverses main drag – is Snow Crash. A cyberdrug that reduces avatars in the digital world to dust, but also infects users in real life, leaving them in a vegetative state.
This is bad news for Hiro, a freelance hacker and the Metaverses best swordfighter, and mouthy skateboard courier Y. T.. Together, investigating the Infocalypse, they trace back the roots of language itself to an ancient Sumerian priesthood and find they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.
In this special edition of the remarkably prescient modern classic, Neal Stephenson explores
linguistics, computer science, politics and philosophy in the form of a break-neck adventure into the fast-approaching yet eerily recognizable future.