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Salon Interview with Neal Stephenson
papertiger writes "Andrew Leonard has an interesting story,
Code, on Neal Stephenson.
He also has a FAQ on the book which is worth reading. " And I get to see Chris DiBonia today-who has my signed copy,
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
One could even argue that "consensual computer based reality" has its roots in old computer games like ADVENT and STRTRK...
"you are in a twisty maze of conflicting claims, all different"
And what is with all the stereotypes? "There are two types of geeks". Although he does mention the generalization may be unfair, he seems convinced that this categorization really does apply to Stephenson. Give us a break! Our we really to believe that Stephenson is so one-dimensional?
You'll also want to read the stuff he's written under the psuedonym "Stephen Bury" (I think that's the name- someone please correct me if I got it wrong, as I am at work). Same style of writing. Same brilliance.
hint- crypto is in the title of the book.
And I get the feeling that in a way NS is the sort of person who wants things to be just one-level removed when it comes to the unwashed masses.
How about the arithmetic errors. Last time I checked 20*100 was not 200(pg. 168). Looks like Cryptonomicon was edited by the same people who are working on the Harlan Ellison re-issues.
I've just started Cryptonomicon, but I've read Snow Crash and The Diamond Age.
I find Stephenson's take on postmodernism refreshing. All cultures are not equal; a good novelist can critique them. Tolerance is not the supreme good. Also, one could hardly expect a novelist who writes about and respects mathematics and science to be very sympathetic to postmodernism, which is anti-science, viewing science as just one more "belief system" to choose from.
The difference between Stephenson and the Nazis is that the Nazis killed people they disagreed with; Stephenson just satirizes them in books.
There is a similarity between the post-modernists and the Nazis, however. Both object violently to those who disagree with them, because both despair of being able to resolve differences rationally. The postmodernists don't believe in "truth" or "reason", so how can you "reason" with someone with a different "belief system"? The most important thing is to be tolerant of all belief systems, except those belief systems that are intolerant, that believe in a right and a wrong.
The Nazi ideology also stems partially from the despair that comes from Nietzche's idea that every thing is relative. The Nazis tried to plug the gaping whole that resulted from this nihilism with an irrational belief in the Fuhrer and the volk. Again, because the Nazi's didn't believe in objective truth, they couldn't reason with those who disagreed with them. They just shot them.
Like a good sci-fi writer, I think Stephenson is ahead of the curve on this. Post-modernism really is a dead-end. It's gradually being discredited, and I think in the next century you will see people returning to more rigorous philosophies.
Steve Molitor
steve_molitor@yahoo.com
I've plowed through Lacan (a lot), Derrida (well, some), Jameson (sp?) and various others, so I also got to where I am "by trying to to find out what the principles had actually said." I've also read a lot of Nietchze, which is where I think a lot of this comes from (although I respect Nietchze a lot more than Lacan, Derrida, et al).
Of course, any statement about postmodernism will be a generalization, and not true of everything that calls itself or has been called postmodern. Nevertheless, there are some things that can be said that are true of most postmodernism. One is that postmodernism and modern science are fundamentally at odds. Of course science treats every hypothesis as provisional, dependent on experimental validation, and vulnerable to being overturned by the next clever experiment. But science does agree on a method for getting closer to the truth. To the postmodernist, there is no truth to get closer to -- every reality is "constructed." The scientific method is no more valid than a tarot card reader's.
Postmodernism is more than just truisms like "Other peoples opinions are important too", or "People don't always act rationally," or "No one culture is right about everything." At the heart of postmodernism is an attack on the very idea of "reality" or "truth" itself, not just disagreements about how to arrive at truth.
"The junk that preceded postmodernism wasn't any more useful" is a very postmodern statement. Are you saying that everything is junk? That Plato and Aristotle were just as stupid as Derrida and Lacan? Plato said a lot of stupid things, but certainly there's more wisdom in The Republic than in Ecrits.
You're right to say that criticizing the pomo's is not new. Allan Bloom was probablly the first to expose the fact that the emporer had no clothes. But Stephenson, in The Diamond Age, did a good job of describing a society (the neo-victorians) where these insights penetrated to the level of common sense.
Steve Molitor
steve_molitor@yahoo.com
Someone *SHOULD REALLY* inform this guy's editor that this "article" would've a hell of a lot more readable if it was written in English rather than ST:TNG Technobabble...
Sheesh
Amazon.com has an interview with Stephenson available here.
Amazon.com has an interview with Stephenson available here.
/. wants to put a space in the link. Here it normallike.
i es/science-fiction/may-1-1999-neal-stephen son-interview/002-2888212-6449660
Hmmm, it seems
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/categor
Title/Author verified (by check at bn.com)
Stephen Bury- The Cobweb -
Stephen Bury- Interface -
both are excellent books Stephenson wrote under that psuedonym.
This very question was asked at the Boston reading on Monday. Basically, calling it Finux fictionalizes it, and that allows him to change what he needs in service of the book. When Neal transports NT into the book, he brings in all the real-world aspects of NT: produced by Microsoft, semi-replacement for the old Windows, etc.
Let's say he wants something similar-a OS made by a worldspaning megacompany, but without, say, the baggage of Microsoft being beseiged by DoJ, Linux, etc. So he calls it Ultrasoft RP, and he has most of the background there (most people will know what he's talking about), but he can change crucial details. He could say the RP kernel was created by a prodigy 10-yr old girl and was ripped away from her by said evil corporation, which is not (to the best of my knowledge) something you can say about NT. Calling Linux Finux allows Neal to take the essence of the concept and dress it up as he wants.
Dave*
Anyone have any ideas?
-Brett.
Posted by tyler23:
Please excuse the length of this post.
The critique of Pynchon above is one of the weakest of the dozens I have read. I urge all thinking persons to read Vineland or GR and find out for themselves. "Forced imagery?" Perhaps. And that damn Van Gogh, always with the heavy brushstrokes! What's up with that?
Reasons you might like Pynchon:
1) His books (since GR) are designed as nonlinear conceptual puzzles. They are difficult on purpose, but with a heavy payoff.
2) The structure of his writing is fractal, in the metaphorical sense obviously. Motifs are repeated across scales, with variation. He will suddenly "zoom in" on a detail to such a degree that it leaves you wondering why he'd bother - but remember it, because you'll need it later. Also, motifs/tropes emerge from each other in a seemingly dynamic fashion.
2.1) For this reason, while you are "inside" the structure, his stories seem very chaotic and confusing, but once the "big fractal" pops into relief, all of the various elements across scales "come into focus." This is art for people who think in terms of dynamical systems.
2.11) This (seeing the big fractal) is less true for GR, his most difficult (and rewarding) work. I have read it nearly a dozen times and am still apprehending parts of the overall structure.
3) He's hysterical, if you're smart enough to understand him.
4) At least in GR, he intentionally weeds out the weak early on. The entire first section ("Beyond the Zero," I think) is very dense, utterly nonlinear, and contains a "killer" section in the form of a really long boooooooring part followed by a couple extreme grossouts in close succession. Persevere, or skip to part 2, which is much easier to read, more fun and draws in the connections that let you understand part 1.
I always recommend Vineland first, especially to Americans, especially to West Coast or somewhat counterculture-ish Americans.
Now, Stephenson - he's OK. He didn't invent anything much though. He's obviously brilliant and is full of good ideas and great metaphors - I *love* the 4 car dealerships from "Command Line" - but he couldn't plot his way out of the proverbial wet paper bag. At least, that is his historical weakness. He tends to overflow with genius notions, and crams them all in the first 100 pages of his books; then he realizes he has to somehow make all this stuff *work* together as a story. It never does, and the endings of Snow Crash and Diamond Age are among the lamest I know. He's very witty and fluent, but he's like that programmer we all know who's writes great low-level code but doesn't have a clue how to design a large, functioning system. I enjoy skimming his books for the ideas and clever prose, but as *books* I have considered them all failures. Influential, interesting, fun failures, and at least he's posing worthwhile questions, but still...
It's a pleasure to see Vernor Vinge mentioned here. I would also recommend the later works of Philip K. Dick (the Valis trilogy et. al), especially to those of you who have referenced Illuminatus! (or if you enjoyed the metaphysical elements of The Matrix). Interesting discussion.
I've actually read this monster of a book. (For those who haven't as much as seen it yet, Cryptonomicon is more than nine hundred pages long. This is longer than either James Joyce's Ulysses or Shea and Wilson's Illuminatus!, though substantially shorter than the Bible.) I've read it -- and I'm not sure what to think of it.
... on to the book's ostensible artistic content. First off I would like to say that if I were an academic literary critic I would already be working on a paper entitled "Representations of the Sexual in the Works of Neal Stephenson." When I was reading Snow Crash for the first time I boggled over Stephenson's characterizing vicious, warlike, sexually violent, patriarchal cultures (like the Old Testament Hebrews) as islands of rationality and sanity in a sea of Ashtoreth-worshipping, feminized, oversexed, primitives. After The Diamond Age I dismissed it largely as reverence for "people of the Book" (as opposed to "people of the Seed" perhaps?), but after Cryptonomicon I'm not so sure. He honestly doesn't seem to have a place for a culture, or a character for that matter, which is simultaneously technically creative and sexually open. And now he's even promulgating the old saw that masturbation drains away your creative energies. I find it surprising that he never brings his sexual conservatism to bear against Alan Turing -- though homosexuality does get Turing's ex-lover Rudy in trouble with the Nazi regime, it seems that Stephenson has extended his sexual views past their Old-Testament basis, at least insofar as accepting Turing & Co.
Let me say first that I liked this book, and that I would definitely recommend it to those who've enjoyed Stephenson's other work. However, that doesn't mean I don't have problems with it, which I do. Here are a few impressions:
The editing, at least in this first printing, is nothing short of terrible. The book is full of typos; the FAQ-documented one in the middle of a Perl script is just the most technically relevant. Some are truly embarrassing -- using "damn" to mean "dam" in one place -- while others just look to be the sign of a lack of spell-checking.
Another example of poor editing is evident in the large portions of the book which are printed in a monospace (non-proportional) font, intended to resemble email or other computer text. Real email does not contain ligatures (those jammed-together "fi" and "fl" characters), and in a real monospace font, the spaces themselves are the same size as the letters.
Early in the book -- in the part excerpted on the Web page -- Stephenson commits the Bill Gates Crypto Error. This is my expression for referring to, in the context of crypto, "factoring large prime numbers", as Gates did in The Road Ahead. Naturally, it is very easy to factor large prime numbers; what is hard is to factor composite numbers which are the products of large primes. This is called "prime factorization", but the numbers being factored are most definitely composites.
Okay, enough of the technical bickering
In the light of Larry Wall's eminently reasonable adoption of the postmodern aesthetic in discussing Perl, the Net, and (post)modern culture, I find Stephenson's sniping at postmodernism to be rather silly. While his spoofs of academia -- as in the characters Charlene and Geb (that's G.E.B., as in Hofstadter's book) -- may well be deserved, he seems all too willing to sweep the postmodern under the rubric of the decadent, morally loose, and irrational. These are, ironically enough in a WWII novel, basically the same critiques that the Nazi regime made of "modern" (e.g. Picasso) art.
That's about all I can come up with right now -- oh, one other thing: How the fsck did Enoch Root come back to life?!
I for one think that calling Charlene postmodern is to confuse the issue. Charlene is intolerant and politically-correct, and uses her position as a scholar to mistreat Randy. Her intolerant breed of feminism is a good example of a "totalizing discourse", something that postmodernism tends to critique.*
Have you read "Perl, the first postmodern computer language"? While I think he makes some mistakes about Modernism, he can at least get the point out about postmodernism.
That we live in a postmodern world does not mean that we're not allowed to have opinions or be right or wrong. To me it means things like these:
(This is of course just a partial list. Any other people out there who think postmodernism has something useful to offer, please add to it.)
* Michel Foucault, a postmodern cultural critic if ever there was one, refers to perspectives that claim to understand the whole world as "totalizing discourses". Marxism is his classic example; a die-hard Marxist claims that all social phenomena can be explained completely in terms of economics. Charlene's warrior-feminism is a totalizing discourse which sees everything in terms of white male aggression. Foucault holds that totalizing discourses don't work.
I'm about 2/3 of the way through Cryptonomicon (so please don't spoil it for me!) and I'd really like to recommend this book, but I can't. Not that it's a terrible read. I'll take Cryptonomicon over Tom Clancy's latest piece of trash any day. (That doesn't say much, I'll read the nutritional information on the side of a bag of M&M's over a Tom Clancy novel.) The characters aren't badly drawn although they can get a little too cliche. The scenes are fairly well set and the book doesn't bog down too much. And, as in all of Stephenson's novels, there's a brief section of pure humour to be found somewhere in it. In Snow Crash, it was the toilet paper memo, in Interface, the "Prince of Darkness" chapter, and in Cryptonomicon, it's the e-mail from Randy describing his adventure in the Phillipines. I read it out loud to my girlfriend and had her on the floor laughing.
What's missing seems to be a subtext. Snow Crash has a brilliant assault on the libertarian anti-utopia. Diamond Age attacks the 20th century's whole idea of cultural progress, suggesting it's an illusion altogether. Interface slags the process of packaging candidates and selling them like underarm deodorant, adding a few very 90's tricks to this otherwise kind of tired topic. Even Zodiac trashes the softer minded part of the environmental movement. But what is the subtext of Cryptonomicon? I don't know. I hope it's not his weak and insipid attacks on postmodernism. I know, it can be fun, but flamming a pomo is like eating Chinese food: at first you're satisfied, but a few minutes later you want another one. Honestly, we've all been there, and Alan Sokal did it better.
If I want to read WWII historical fiction, I can read a Mitchner novel, and the world of high-tech start-ups is already a little too heavily chronicled. So what is this book for? What does this book have to say that takes 900 pages? At page 650, I have yet to figure it out.
I don't feel that I wasted my $25 getting this book, but I learned little, and I can't say it's made me think. The book may be a commercial sucess, but I can't call it an artistic one. It's well crafted so far, which is pretty good for the Stephenson who seemed to have such a hard time bringing the Diamond Age to a satisfying close.
I really like Stephenson, I have since I bought Zodiac on a lark in train station years ago. He's going where others aren't, and I appreciate that. But he's not Pynchon, at least not yet.
This interview didn't seem to cover any new ground either, except to confirm that he has a background in tech. Salon is a big enough deal that they should be able to keep his attention long enough for a good interview.
After reading the decision on the Bernstein case (see the /. article for a refresher), the typo in Stephenson's book struck me as a perfect defense.
The decision refers to the Government's claim that the functional aspects of crypto override any First-Amendment issues. (See pp. 4235, 4236, 4238n., and the dissent on pp. 4246ff.) Thus, we can export the first edition of Cryptonomicon in machine-readable form, free of obnoxious restraints, precisely because it doesn't function. A comment on the code would be nice, or a pointer to the errata, but if the code don't work, the Government can't claim it's crypto!
Any takers? :-)
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
Well, written in cooperation with his Uncle. Apparently they each wrote different chapters, then cleaned up the style to make it more consistent (otherwise it would stand out as a collaboration
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Neal Stephenson was on for the whole half hour on ZDTV's Big Thinkers, which will be running for the rest of the day (Wednesday).
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
The concept is quite old, byt Gibson invented the term 'cyberspace' in his novel Neuromancer (1984).
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
I think the general idea was that he created the Metaverse in his book. The idea of virtual reality wasn't his, but this particular implementation (virtual implementation? Is writing about VR Virtual Virtual Reality?)
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've always liked Andrew Leonard, and still do. He regularly participates in Slashdot. He's pretty technically savvy (for a technology writer!) and has, I think, a keener critical eye for the social and cultural aspects of technology than does, say, a certain J. Katz. Frankly, I wish HE were the in-house journalist here at Slashdot. You'll never see ?smart quotes? in HIS copy.
However, this was not one of his finer columns. You win some, you lose some.
Pi is a finite number, it less than 3.2 and more than 3.1, there it has limits, therefore it is finite. its like that triangle fractal (looks like a star of david after the 2nd iteration) it has infinite perimeter, but has a finite area.
The interview mentions that Neal Stephenson created the idea of a consentual computer-based reality....I was under the impression that William Gibson did this way back when, with his novel Neuromancer, where he coined the term cyberspace. Am I missing something here?
Finding God in a Dog
I read Gravity's Rainbow about twenty years ago out of sheer cussedness. I couldn't figure out what it was about from the jacket copy, but the reviews were so glowing that I figured it had to be something special. It took three or four tries until I could figure out which way was up. It must have taken me a couple months to get all the way through (read on lunch hours and after dinner) and I didn't always follow all of it, but it was quite a read. The densest thing I've ever waded through. Every few years I pick it back up and make a reasonable dent in it before being overwhelemed once again. It is damned difficult to follow at times. The nice thing, though, is that if you don't mind reading eliptically, you can open it up just about anywhere and fall smack into some inspired set pieces. The one that really turned the trick for me was the scene where Slothrop is visiting his most recent conquests' mother and is offered a seemingly endless string of absurdly disgusting candies. That and the one where he follows his harmonica down into the the toilet at the night club. One of these days (when I retire?) I'll have another couple of months to devote to it again.
Quite by accident, I happened across this link to a site from Bruce Schneier, the cryptographer who dreamed up the crypto system used in the book. It is a fairly detailed description of how to implement the Solitaire system. It is detailed, but it is a rather simple and elegant system, and the details are relatively few. I would like to know just how tongue-in-cheek (or not) the multiple references to the 'secret police' are.
The FAQ (by Stephenson, although this isn't clear from papertiger's description) is much more interesting than the "interview" by Leonard (who seems more interested in his own words than Stephenson's). The Frequently Anticipated Questions include some nice technical detail and a cool "Should I read this book" section.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
I asked him, and apparently, he originally wanted to add two other subplots to 'Cryptonomicon', but he was advised the printing machines couldn't handle the manuscript if he did that. Someone else asked him about 'In The Beginning was the Command Line', and he replied that text was in some deep way just better than simply graphics.
And yeah, when it came time for the signing, I snatched a Beanie Baby penguin, the only one I'll ever buy, and asked if he could sign it. The Vromans staff was nonplussed but game, he quizzed me on my choice of Linux distribution and the penguin was signed (as well as the book.)
Shouldn't Neal Stephenson have his own Slashdot icon by now? :)
I think I see the point here (about pi being transcendental and all) but if there is a need for infinite precision, wouldn't it also be correct to claim that it's impossible to cut a stick that is one (1.00000000...) inch long?
Then there's the whole problem of units. Your "international standard inch" may be one inch long by definition. What's to stop someone from devising a new system of measurement, in which some platinum bar in Paris is (by definition) pi units long?
AFAIK both the concept and the word 'cyberspace' were invented before Gibson.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
The point is not measuring pi, the point is precision. Whatever is the length of your stick, it is expressed as a finite number (physics takes care of this, think scale of atoms). Pi is not a finite number, ergo...
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Isn't an interview supposed to show you the person being interviewed? I got a distinct impression that this "interview" was about Andrew Leonard's ruminations about talking with Neal Stephenson, and I'm not that interested in them.
New/interesting info about Stephenson/Cryptonomicon: zero. New info about Andrew Leonard: self-obsessed. Avoid.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I was hoping for an informative Q/A session with someone I consider to be a brilliant writer. No. I don't agree with everything he says, but admire his courage in saying it, and the intelligence of his conclusions.
Maybe it's just me, but Leonard's apparent "expertise" on Geeks [note the capital letter, as Leonard seems to imply] ("Lesson for would-be interviewers of geeks: Never ask them a yes-or-no question, because that's all you'll get in response.") was entirely too distracting in the context of this story (an interview it most certainly is not).
Yes, send Stephenson back to Seattle, he DOES have more writing to do... and while you're at it, send Leonard back to to the "La Prematentious Cafe" where he can enduldge himself without fear of witnesses.
David Veatch => Pretentious enough to know better
] D
dunno, i really prefer gibson's implementation of the cyberspace genre. stephenson isn't as good a write, imho...much more plain, less stylistic
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
...but i would have liked more quotes from neal and less talk. but this 'interveiw' does introduce one to what neal has been upto and does give some good background info. think i will fwd it to some non-techi friends; then maybe i can get them to try to touch a computer...
but i know that no one but computer geeks and what-to-be-hackers-in-training will read his new book, i mean 900 pages that bigger then illuminatus and that some sex in it so most people could get something from it. ( but then illuminatus has nothing to do with computers, but somehow alot with geeky things )
hmmm now how will i trick non-greek (we need a better term for this ) friends to read "In the Beginning was the Command Line." cause they ask questions that are answered there and i dont think i can put it as well. hmmm...
well, time to get back to werk...
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
run. to somewhere that you can get "the Crying of Lot 49". or look in a libary... it's IMHO his best book. but it too short not 200pages. it's like illumiatus but easyer to read / grok.
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
Yes, Neal Stephenson should have his own slashdot mugshot, as the esteemed landtuna suggests.
My brother has been urging me to read his stuff for more than a year, but until I read the Slashdot-posted interview I hadn't. After reading it, I was hooked: the guy is brilliant, yet down to earth -- and translates those properties well onto paper.
So in the past 2 weeks I've read Snow Crash and Zodiac, am almost through The Diamond Age, and 40 pages into The Big U; I'll get in some quality Coffee time at barnes ignoble soon to get into Cryptonomicon.
Go Neal!
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Yes, Neal Stephenson should have his own slashdot mugshot, as the esteemed landtuna suggests.
My brother has been urging me to read his stuff for more than a year, but until I read the Slashdot-posted interview I hadn't. After reading it, I was hooked: the guy is brilliant, yet down to earth -- and translates those properties well onto paper.
So in the past 2 weeks I've read Snow Crash and Zodiac, am almost through The Diamond Age, and 40 pages into The Big U; I'll get in some quality Coffee time at barnes ignoble soon to get into Cryptonomicon.
Go Neal!
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
the advertisement for that Zippo money clip pocket tool? It has a pocket knife, file and scissors; and it can hold your money, too! Über geek accessory :) :) :) Almost as cool as the mini-Sebertool/mouse knife/space pen trinity that clinks around in my pocket.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I have read a lot.
Pynchon's imagery is overdrawn and forced (ESPECIALLY in Gravity's shit-eating Rainbow)
He is obviously a scared person (see Vineland)
I haven't read the Crying of Lot 49.
WHY do people keep comparing people to Pynchon?
Writers write, Pynchon TRIES to write, and apparently Stephenson PROMOTES what he writes.
Try William Vollman, but I'm not promising everything. John Barthes The SotWeed Factor was a joy, but the Floating Opera was not.
The hot literature right now is coming out of India anyway. See the recent issue of the Economist for a couple of REAL reviews.
The reviewer obviously could not remove his lips from the base of Neal's *ock (can I say that, is this cable?) long enough to take a good hard look and what seems to amount to little more than pretentious pop trash.
Coding Basic since he was 15? Am I supposed to be impressed, or was his AIM to get me to laugh?
I was 9. I was doing stuff on a Vic-20, a Commodore PET, the first programmable Atari box and one of my friend's had a Sinclair.
Life can be vicious and rude, and tripe like that review brings out the worst in me. Pynchon is a waste of time.