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#stephenson — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #stephenson, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Can't stop thinking about the world building exercise/setup in Stephenson's Anathem where the "avout" (aka intelligentsia) were forced to live in gated monastic communities isolated to varying degrees (and by rank[1]) from secular society. This setup was decided on for a number of self-serving reasons (by the avout), but also largely imposed on them due to a long history where technology & academic pursuits led to several catastrophic events, incl. periodic civilizational collapses triggered by knowledge/research either being weaponized, irresponsibly commercialized and/or unleashed at a rate which society simply couldn't culturally/ethically/politically handle...

    He (Stephenson) termed these events "Praxic crises" to emphasize that these kinds of disaster happen when purely theoretical insight is employed as real-world technology (praxis) without any restraint. In reality, there obviously isn't such a clear-cut separation between "purely theoretical knowledge" and its applications (POSIWID etc.) and that also forms part of the basis of this book's premise... I think we also very well know all the causes for such crises: From extreme short-term incentives (profit, war, perceived control/power), lack of ethical/philosophical grounding among decision makers (amplified by political power hierarchies), first-to-market pressures vs. deep understanding & balancing of impacts, but also severe lack of institutional regulation & memory (partially due to cyclic collapse and social amnesia)...

    Food for thought...

    [1] Monastic rank influenced degree of isolation: Unarians were allowed a few days outside each year, Decenarians every 10 years, Centenarians every 100 years, Millenarians only opened every 1000 years...

    #Anathem #Stephenson #Technology #Science #Praxis #Collapse

  2. Revisiting Classics: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

    Over the last year or so, I've been revisiting books that were influential both to tabletop RPGs I'm playing and to genres I really enjoy. Snow Crash belongs a little bit to both lists. I originally came through it as an influence to a game I enjoy, but the cyberpunk genre has come to be one I really enjoy. Its publication in 1992 puts it a little later in the cyberpunk canon than books like Neuromancer. It tells the story of hacker turned pizza delivery boy for the mafia Hiro Protagonist […]

    alexanderkeane.com/2026/01/24/

  3. When Stephenson 2-18 dies, it won’t fade: it’ll detonate. This monster star is so huge, and its death might forge a black hole. But when will it happen?

    Read More: t.co/J1KY2o29Sq

    #Space #Astronomy #Supernova #BlackHole #Science #ASTRO #Astrology #stephenson

  4. Les événements du 27 septembre.
    En 1825, ouverture de la première ligne ferroviaire de transports de passagers. Pour la première fois, des passagers prennent place dans un train emmené par la Locomotion No 1 de Georges #Stephenson, sur la ligne « Stockton and Darlington Railway » en Angleterre.
    histoiredesinventions.com/27-s

  5. Zem VS Slnko VS Stephenson 2-18

    Earth VS Sun VS Stephenson 2-18

    📽️ Universe Science

    #Universe #space #science #earth #sun #stephenson

  6. With all the tech bros, CO2 issues, climate crisis, etc. I'm wondering why nobody refers to Neal #Stephenson's novel „Termination Shock“ as a promising approach to catch CO2? Of course it doesn’t end happily, but anyway?

    (I think it’s Stephenson's weakest novel, the plot isn’t great and everything very predictable)

  7. Les événements du 27 septembre.
    En 1825, ouverture de la première ligne ferroviaire de transports de passagers. Pour la première fois, des passagers prennent place dans un train emmené par la Locomotion No 1 de Georges #Stephenson, sur la ligne « Stockton and Darlington Railway » en Angleterre. …
    histoiredesinventions.com/27-s

  8. 𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

    ✧ Wolverton Viaduct ✧

    Wolverton Viaduct is a railway bridge carrying the West Coast Main Line over the River Great Ouse to the north of Wolverton, part of Milton Keynes, in south-eastern England. Built in 1838 for the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) to the design of Robert Stephenson, it was the largest viaduct on the L&BR's r...

    #RiverGreatOuse #WolvertonEmbankment #Wolverton #England #Stephenson #Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolverto

  9. So, endlich #Amalthea von #Neal #Stephenson durch. Hat mich leider überhaupt nicht überzeugt :-/
    Wenig glaubwürdige Zukunftsvision, Charakter, die emotional so überfordert sind, dass man nicht drüber schreiben muss, aber dafür sehr viele Infos über Peitschen aus Robotern… #Roman #Hörbuch

  10. I follow a fascinating blog "Bridge of the Month" established by the late Bill Harvey, an expert on masonry bridges, and now carried on by his son Hamish. This month looks at the 1850 George Stephenson viaduct on the East Coast Main line near Morpeth. Last weekend a large area of stonework fell off it reducing the line to single track, that single track now with a 5mph speed limit.

    #Bridges #RailwayBridge #ECML #Stephenson #NetworkRail #Railway #BridgeCollapse

    billharveyassociates.com/bom/1