The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
The novel “The Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson was published for the first time in 1995. It won the Hugo and Locus Awards.
John Percival Hackworth created A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer for Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw, a rich Neo-Victorian, who commissioned it to provide a better education for his granddaughter. However, Hackworth made an illegal copy for his daughter but it was stolen by Harv, a child from the poorest class who gave it to his sister Nell.
What Hackworth did was discovered with various consequences that also involved other people, who had different agendas, also connected to the different phyles they belong to. Nell has access to a level of education that poor people are generally excluded from, but her mother represents for her a sort of prison that prevents her from getting out of the slums.