FROM: So I read ‘Diamond Age'
Nell gets this “book” — the primer — which is hard to picture as a book. Why would you turn pages when the text on the page can change? But, anyway, it’s a book in the book — not a tablet. Fine. Maybe e-ink wasn’t a thing yet, or maybe Stephenson was just trying to push our conception of the possible? But, whatever the object is, her educational multimedia text changes itself to give her the story she would like while also nudging her to learn things she needs to learn to be successful and independent minded.
Two other girls in the book also have a copy of it, the daughter of the very rich man who commissioned the invention and the daughter of the man who actually built it. It seems like those two girls will also be important, but they are not really, in the end.