Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Quicksilver, is due to be released later this month. It is both a sequel to his brilliant novel Cryptonomicon, and the first in a trilogy of novels known collectively as The Baroque Cycle (to be published at six month intervals).
On the front page of the Baroque Cycle website is a rather interesting cryptographic puzzle (not quite up to the level of some other promotional games or puzzles, but an interesting foray nonetheless) which appeared without fanfare or instructions (well, sort of). Todd Garrison solved the puzzle, and how he did so makes for fascinating reading. Countless setbacks and dead ends eventually led the patient Mr. Garrison to a “Philosophical Language” invented by John Wilkins and expressed in what was called “Real Character.”
Also of note is a new Stephenson interview in Wired. Its short but its good:
During the information revolution, it became possible for those with an engineering mentality to control large amounts of capital. So people who, if they’d been born a generation or two earlier, would’ve ended up sitting in a little office at IBM pushing a T-square around ended up becoming captains of industry. From that point of view, it seems like there’s been this revolutionary change that’s occurred within our lifetimes, but there are precedents. The power of engineers and scientists waxes and wanes. In the ’90s, we went through a period when that influence became very large, but those times may be over, at least for a little while.
Good stuff.