The Diamond Age

This was a Hugo written in 1996, a futuristic society of ethnic tribes rather than countries where technology dominates everything.  Microscopic nanotech machines float in the air, they are in the water, they are in your body and always working away. An engineer decides that something else is needed for his daughter, so he compiles a book, 'The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer'.  Then over the next 20 years it molds the girl into a leader of yet another tribe, this one of Amazon like women. Along the way there are jokes about technology including many references to Alan Turing and the use of codes, cyphers and thinking in 1's and 0's.