After reading Jennifer Government, I ended up playing on nationstates.org for a little while. It is an interesting contraption to play around with but not being terribly social, I got bored and let my nation "Oregano-stan" die. Anyway, I noted that the site was advertising Barry's book Lexicon and so I got it out of the library and decided to read it. I do think that Barry's writing style is not far off from Neal Stephenson and William Gibson although his plots are less intricate and his writing is less about the technology and more about political philosophy.
I enjoyed the book although figuring out that certain parts of the story are happening years apart was annoying to figure out. The mechanic of mind control through specific words is an interesting one although I feel that it means that the mind must be linear and hackable to an extent that just does not seem right. The grain of truth is that there is a way to influence people through presentation of ideas whether you call it dialogue, advertising or propaganda, but there it is.
I would recommend the book, especially if you enjoy science fiction. Just a minor quibble is that the opening scene takes place in PDX Airport and well, the descriptions are just all wrong.
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