The novelist Neal Stephenson’s prophetic power never ceases to astonish. The Diamond Age (1995), is set in a technologically highly advanced world, with ubiquitous nanotechnology in addition to something strangely familiar called “P.I.” The abbreviation is explained in the following exchange:

Yet, for all their technological sophistication, these two men are “neo-Victorians.” They have chosen to embrace 19th-century manners and fashions partly as a defense against the collapse of state power and the fragmentation of nations into “phyles,” i.e., tribes.