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01 November 2008
Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:57:35 GMTAnathem
Neal Stephenson
Stephenson rocks once more. There’s such a great fantastical quality to his books, everything is stretched so close to absurdity but in such a way that you really just want to believe it. It’s great. This book makes me want a bolt, chord and sphere—how cool would it be if those were my three possessions?
Started it monday, finished it up on the soccer bus ride last night. That gives me a good burn rate of about 200 pages a day.
Stephenson’s bent here is almost spiritual. Where in his earlier books it was more techno–social (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Diamond age; at least as I remember them, rereads are now under consideration), and where the System of the World was historical and philosophic, here Stephenson takes his compelling and marvellous storytelling and wraps it around systems of existence and belief. There’s a very Emersonian transcendentalism (Emerson is even mentioned as an aside somewhere late in the book.)
Which is great, I love it when a book comes along that meshes with my insufficiently explored innate feelings towards some subject, here that of ‘god/religion/whatever.’
Nothing is more important that that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hum you in and come at you in so many ways. Fraa Orolo, 109
Why is religion such a universal in societies throughout history?
That’s right, people have a need to feel that they are part of some sustainable project. Something that will go on without them. It creates a feeling of stability. I believe that the need for that kind of stability is as basic and as desperate as some of the other, more obvious needs. But there’s more than one way to get it. We may not think much of the sline subculture, but you have to admit it’s stable! Then the burgers have a completely different kind of stability. Orolo in dialog with Erasmus, 205
I also love the formalized system of dialog, where it’s an objective of the theors to regularly argue with each other. If only people would actually do that! I’m generally a fan of arguing, and tend to do it just as often as I don’t. If only everyone else did as well…
I no longer respected that oath. Or at least, I no longer trusted those who were charged with enforcing the Discipline to which I had sworn. But I couldn’t very well say as much to these friends of mine who did still respect it. 231
Why do I hate politics? Why does going to church make me feel catatonic? It’s not that I hate democracy or that I think that believing in god in some unforgivably–backward and primitive notion; it’s more that both systems have steadily devolved in their lifetimes, leaving them (and their devotees) at the point where they garner at least as much of my disdain as they do my respect.
…the Convox was political, and made decisions by compromise. And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all. 573
I like the notion of introspectionist. 697
Stephenson posits the idea that google should ensconce itself as useful to the web by generating endless amounts of crap in different places on the internet, thereby requiring people to use it to actually find anything worthwhile:
Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to make more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap back out. They created syndevs whose sole purpose was to spew crap into The Reticulum. But it had to be good crap. Samman, 795
(Maybe google already came up with this, and that’s why they bought out blogger.)
Mystic vs. Poetic (Laterran):
The mystic nails a symbol to one meaning that was true for a moment but soon becomes false. The poet, on the other hand, sees that truth while it’s true but understands that symbols are always in flux and that their meanings are fleeting.
“Anyway, my point is that guys like Flec have a weakness, almost a kind of addiction, for the mystical, as opposed to poetic, way of using their minds. And there’s an optimistic side of me that says such a person could break that addiction, be retrained to think like a poet, and accept the fluxational nature of symbols and meaning.”
“Okay, but what’s the pessimistic side telling you?”
“That the poet’s way is a feature of the brain, a specific organ or faculty that you either have or you don’t. And that those who have it are doomed to be at war forever with those who don’t.” Erasmus and Quin, 883-4And in the second-to-last paragraph of the book, Stephenson nails exactly and precisely they way I’ve tried to see the world for a few years now:
Orolo said that the more he knew of the complexity of the mind, and the cosmos with which it was inextricably and mysteriously bound up, the more inclined he was to see it as a kind of miracle—not in quite the same sense that our Deolaters use the term, for he considered it altogether natural. He meant rather that the evolution of our minds from bits of inanimate matter was more beautiful and extraordinary than any of the miracles cataloged down through the ages by the religions of our world. And so he had an instinctive skepticism of any system of thought, religious or theorical, that pretended to encompass that miracle, and in so doing sought to draw limits around it. Erasmus, 889-90
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18 August 2005
Thu, 18 Aug 2005 21:58:00 GMTA Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
A delightful trek through the development of the world we live on. A broad and deep look at science from a non scientists point of view.
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Thu, 18 Aug 2005 20:00:00 GMT
A World of Warcraft Worldvia Kjell Olsen2361 days ago
I played Medievia while I was still in middle school, but it just got boring, and I’ve hardly plated a video game since.
I’ve been looking (more like thinking about looking) for a really sweet RPG to play since I read Snow Crash, because the metaverse absolutely kicks ass. Anyone know of a virtual world with not so much an achievable goal, and one that incorporates creating your own bits and pieces? World of Warcraft hasn’t ever appealed to me, I don’t know why (my aversion to video games, maybe).
I guess you could use this as your game engine…
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Also somewhat recently
