Stephenson interviewed by Reason magazine

While I'm on the topic of Neal Stephenson I might as well link to an interview that Reason magazine conducted (primary via email) with Stephenson in late fall of 2005. It is interesting to hear Stephenson's work discussed in the context of Libertarianism.

The interview includes a fantastic quote about how terrorism encourages statism and government (inadvertently) fosters Libertarianism:

Speaking as an observer who has many friends with libertarian instincts, I would point out that terrorism is a much more formidable opponent of political liberty than government. Government acts almost as a recruiting station for libertarians. Anyone who pays taxes or has to fill out government paperwork develops libertarian impulses almost as a knee-jerk reaction. But terrorism acts as a recruiting station for statists. So it looks to me as though we are headed for a triangular system in which libertarians and statists and terrorists interact with each other in a way that I'm afraid might turn out to be quite stable.

It is frightening to me how right he is. The first thing that really changed after the September 11th attacks was that it became "patriotic" to stand up and say, "safety is more important than liberty". The most bitter irony of all is that this attitude ultimately leads to the kind of totalitarian hegemony that our constitution was designed to avoid. By granting our government more control of our lives in exchange for the illusion of greater safety we are subverting the very principles that our nation was founded on.

Unfortunately the harder the terrorists fight against us the natural reaction for many is to just work that much harder to entrench the existing power structure under the auspices of "national security". Make no mistake, regardless of who is in office in 2009, if another tragedy on the scale of the 9/11 attacks were to occur on American soil the statists would push for legislation that makes the Patriot Act look tame by comparison. An unfortunate truism about liberty is that it is one of those diffuse qualities that is much easier to identify in its absence than when you are enjoying its benefits.

Clooney to turn The Diamond Age into a six-hour miniseries

I was just wiki-wandering and I stumbled across the news that George Clooney is the helping to produce a six-hour miniseries based on Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age. I am so excited about this; I think doing it as a miniseries makes a lot more sense than trying to cram the story into a 2 hour movie. Incidentally Stephenson is working on the adaptation so there is no need to worry about his novel being butchered by hacks.

For those unfamiliar with the book, it is a wonderfully-crafted bildungsroman that follows Nell, a young girl finding her way as a thete (or one without a tribe) in a futuristic "neo-Victorian" world where nanotechnology is pervasive. Wikipedia rather clumsily describes it as a postcyberpunk novel but there are too many themes at play in this work to allow for easy classification.

Like the work of Neil Gaiman, the beauty in this story is how Stephenson takes fairy tales and re-contextualizes them so that we can look at stories that we've heard a hundred times from a fresh perspective. The protagonist is aided in her development by a technologically advanced primer (the full title of the book is "The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"). With a nod to Constructivism, the primer is constantly adapting the methods it uses to teach Nell based on the situation that she is in and her current level of experience.

In any case, if you haven't read the book yet I definitely encourage you to do so right away. I have a feeling that even those who aren't fans of the book will enjoy the miniseries when it comes out - George Clooney's name in production credits is becoming a guarantee of quality (except perhaps those Ocean's N movies).

This haiku was approved by the legal department

Two tires fly. Two wail.
A Bamboo grove, all chopped down.
From it, warring songs.
--Bobby Shaftoe's first Haiku from "Cryptonomicon"

It seems only fitting to open my blog with this poem, given that my blog title so blatantly co-opts Stephenson's masterpiece. Suffice it to say, if you have not read this book, go do it now and come back here when you really don't have anything better to do with your time.

So this post represents my first timid steps into the murky waters of electronic ego gratification, or as the hip kids call it, blogging. I'm currently on contract writing software for a very large (Fortune 50) American corporation. Last week they laid off 10% of their workforce or about 8,000 people. Being a contractor in this situation is something akin to being a mercenary in a reserve branch of the Roman army as elephants crest over the hill. I sense with an instinctual certainty that some of those poor saps on the front line are going to get squashed but watch from the side secure in the knowledge that I will not be a member of that ignominious group. Far more likely is that I will be part of the lackey crew impressed into cleaning up the mess of swords, trunks, blood and elephant dung that is the battle's aftermath.

Tortured metaphors aside, there is something a bit twisted about a system where the lowly contractors can go about their business with not a care in the world while the regular employees get to endure (for weeks in advance) the anguish of wondering whether they will wake up tomorrow unemployed. This post could easily devolve into a simple-minded rant about the ills of capitalism (of which there are certainly many). Alternatively I could assume the role of devil's advocate and argue that regular layoffs merely represent a selection pressure to ensure the overall health of the global business ecosystem. Instead, in the spirit of Bobby Shaftoe, and all of the (far more) poetic grunts that came before me, I will distill my thoughts on the issue into a Haiku.

Early fall, leaves shed.
Red victims of ritual,
Broken underfoot.