Mosly unrelated: What struck me from reading this article is how much the Dyson family obviously served go influence Neil Stephenson. From the birth of digital

Mosly unrelated: What struck me from reading this article is how much the Dyson family obviously served go influence Neil Stephenson. From the birth of digital processing (Diamond Age) to Aleutian canoes (Snow Crash) to the depiction of Orion's nuclear space ark (Anathem) ... Makes me wonder what other sources of inspiration Neil might have out there. Perhaps I should actually read the acknowledgments in Stephenson's books.