comment on Language and Meaning

The story line of the book is fairly simple - Julia is working for a company producing a dangerous technology, which has endangered her family. That part of the story is written in easy-to-read language and the story flows well. The more complex part of the story involves the computer programming and technology. Crichton, as is typical, goes into great detail on these topics. Although Crichton uses layman's terms to effectively explain most of the ideas, technology, and analogies of the technological venue in which the book takes place, there are concepts that readers with no working technological information will find difficult to understand. The beauty of Crichton's story is that much of the technology is theoretical anyway and it's not necessary for the reader to fully understand words and phrases such as "nanotechnology," "microbots," and "lines of code." It's also important to note that while these technologies are not entirely explained, there is sufficient information to tantalize the reader with the idea that the concepts are possible, if not a reality.