The CIC, or Central Intelligence Corporation, is a creation of Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash. After the total commercialization of society and the government, the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency, which had evolved in their pursuit of information into very similar entities, were combined into a for-profit database of information. This information is provided by CIC stringers, who constantly upload video clips, rumors, and other information to the database in the hopes that someone will find one of their tidbits useful (and therefore will pay for the use of it). This also led to the evolution of gargoyles, the culmination of wearable computing; these stringers were "online" 24-7, uploading every bit of information recorded by every piece of sensor equipment attached to their bodies.