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I am really enjoying this book. It is a novel of pure geekery - those who appreciate things like building strongholds or dungeons in D&D, or who otherwise like "big idea" societal, ecological, or mechanical construction (things like Dyson spheres, or ringworlds) will also enjoy this book.
Without going into it too much (I'm only about a quarter in myself): Anathem describes events in an alternate world which has spent the last 4000 years recovering from a civilization-shattering disaster caused by a really big particle collider. The response from this was to sequester all abstract thinking into "concents" or "maths" which are essentially giant clocks with automated gates that open every 1, 10, 100, and 1000 years to let the cloistered thinkers interact with the outside world - an extrapolation of the concept of the millennium clock fostered by The Long Now Foundation.
His descriptions of the world and people inside the clock are detail filled and fascinating, to the point where I find myself eager for more; I keep wondering things like: what influences their architecture? What kind of "peer review" systems do they have for their internal publications?
I especially like this kind of world-building concept because of my own thoughts about an Alexandria Project - which is to say, some method and means for preserving and distributing human knowledge. Interestingly, Anathem describes an isolationist "closed source" system which actually excludes the majority of humanity and leaves all the information in the hands of an elite - similar to Asimov's "Foundation" and "Second Foundation". I've envisioned a project like this being more "open source" like a Wikimedia type of thing.
I'm really excited about finishing this book and learning the extent of the world of the maths. I have a feeling I know what the thing they're so concerned with in the first part of the book is...
Without going into it too much (I'm only about a quarter in myself): Anathem describes events in an alternate world which has spent the last 4000 years recovering from a civilization-shattering disaster caused by a really big particle collider. The response from this was to sequester all abstract thinking into "concents" or "maths" which are essentially giant clocks with automated gates that open every 1, 10, 100, and 1000 years to let the cloistered thinkers interact with the outside world - an extrapolation of the concept of the millennium clock fostered by The Long Now Foundation.
His descriptions of the world and people inside the clock are detail filled and fascinating, to the point where I find myself eager for more; I keep wondering things like: what influences their architecture? What kind of "peer review" systems do they have for their internal publications?
I especially like this kind of world-building concept because of my own thoughts about an Alexandria Project - which is to say, some method and means for preserving and distributing human knowledge. Interestingly, Anathem describes an isolationist "closed source" system which actually excludes the majority of humanity and leaves all the information in the hands of an elite - similar to Asimov's "Foundation" and "Second Foundation". I've envisioned a project like this being more "open source" like a Wikimedia type of thing.
I'm really excited about finishing this book and learning the extent of the world of the maths. I have a feeling I know what the thing they're so concerned with in the first part of the book is...