AterSlash (Free subscription) | yesterday
Today’s NY Times reports that Cormac McCarthy is auctioning the 45-year-old Olivetti manual typewriter on which all his novels, screenplays, plays, short stories, and much of his correspondence were written, to benefit the Sante Fe Institute where he is a Research Fellow. What would happen decades from now if, say, Richard Powers or Neal Stephenson attempted to auction their desktops or laptops?...
Ask Slashdot (Free subscription) | yesterday
saddleupsancho writes "Today's NY Times reports that Cormac McCarthy is auctioning the 45-year-old Olivetti manual typewriter on which all his novels, screenplays, plays, short stories, and much of his correspondence were written, to benefit the Sante Fe Institute where he is a Research Fellow. What would happen decades from now if, say, Richard Powers or Neal Stephenson attempted to auction their...
Click World News (Free subscription) | yesterday
saddleupsancho writes "Today's NY Times reports that Cormac McCarthy is auctioning the 45-year-old Olivetti manual typewriter on which all his novels, screenplays, plays, short stories, and much of his correspondence were written, to benefit the Sante Fe Institute where he is a Research Fellow. What would happen decades from now if, say, Richard Powers or Neal Stephenson attempted to auction their...
Computer Nerds Blog (Free subscription) | yesterday
saddleupsancho writes "Today's NY Times reports that Cormac McCarthy is auctioning the 45-year-old Olivetti manual typewriter, on which all his novels, screenplays, plays, short stories, and much of his correspondence were written, to benefit the Sante Fe Institute where he is a Research Fellow. What would happen decades from now if, say, Richard Powers or Neal Stephenson attempted to auction...
Kaedrin Weblog (Free subscription) | 11/26/2009
Just a few interesting links I've run across recently: Seeing Science Through Fiction : A talk with Neal Stephenson, Lee Smolin and Jaron Lanier at the Quantum to Cosmos festival. They talk about lots of interesting stuff. Also of note is a panel discussion featuring the same folks and more, though that one isn't as interesting (and is preceded by some awful babbling). In other Stephenson news, he...
memoirs on a rainy day (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
Lloyd explains why Pinker and Gladwell don’t agree, which is partly based upon Gladwell’s new book, What the Dog Saw., a collection of essays that were published in the New Yorker. Posted in asides, entertainment, politics-social-racism Tagged: asides, books, malcolm gladwell, Neal Stephenson, New Yorker, social, Steven Pinker, what the dog saw [...]
GeekDad (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
We geeks love us our books. That’s why we had to split our picks into two lists! Check it out, there’s some good stuff here. Click on the gift guide logo on the right side column to see the aggregated GeekDad Gift Guides of this and prior years. Anathem Neal Stephenson’s latest masterpiece, it takes awhile to [...]
Translation Blog (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
While reading PoPCo , by Scarlett Thomas, I learnt that the word “avatar”, which refers to an Internet user's alter ego in online forums and other communities, comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “descent of a deity to the Earth in incarnate form”. According to Wikipedia, it was popularised by Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (1992): While Stephenson was not the first to apply the Sanskrit...
Nothing Tra La La? (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
Neal Stephenson's Anathem is a typically robust brick of a novel, 937 pages packed with action, maths and top facts. It was a Christmas present, though the weight of thing put me off starting it until my long flight out to Florida. At first, I thought it was running along the same lines as my great favourites A Canticle for Leibowitz and Riddley Walker : the people of a post-apocalyptic Earth struggling...
Al Fin (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
For some very interesting speculations concerning the uploading of human consciousness, development of human level machine intelligence, and the emulation of human minds in machines, check out the Singularity Summit 2009 videos that are now online. A wide variety of ideas and viewpoints will help to spur your imagination and perhaps open a few mental pathways. Al Fin has very low expectations for these...
South Bend Seven (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Reason Magazine | Hit & Run | Matt Welch | Feds Order News Site to Cough up User Data : Well, here's some awful news ! In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day. The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based...
Kotaku (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Let me get this out of the way: I'm not a Trekkie. I was a loyal Star Wars fan until the prequels and thereafter switched my science fiction allegiance to Neal Stephenson. So forgive me if I can't...
The Geomblog (Free subscription) | 11/08/2009
Neal Stephenson is (or should be !) a familiar figure in the sci-fi/speculative fiction landscape: his Cryptonomicon is a retelling of the story of Turing, along with much modern day drama involving advanced crypto and security. His new book, Anathem , came out with much fanfare, and is a vast tale set in a place where mathematics is a pursuit conducted in monastery-like places with strong religious...
The Strategist (Free subscription) | 11/07/2009
Check out this Q&A between sci-fi writer Neal Stephenson and Slashdot readers (h/t Ubiwar). It ranges over topics like 'Beowulf' and 'Dante' writers, new publishing models, hacking tools as weapons, and the singularity... "I can never get past the structural...
dispatches from TJICistan (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
Unlike Neal Stephenson, the last sentenced of Jered’s blog posts are the best … especially when he’s taking David Foster Wallace (or, at least, his corpse) out behind the woodshed for a well deserved beating. (subject line hattip)
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