More stuff in Cryptonomicon

[avram]

So I’m up to the part in Cryptonomicon with the letter to Penthouse — if you’ve read it, you remember what I’m talking about — and noticed a few things:

1: When Randy does a web search for Andrew Loeb’s home page, the syntax he’s using makes it clear that he’s using Alta Vista, not Google. Just another minor detail that dates the book.

2: The letter mentions buying a bed at Gomer Bolstrood furniture. “Their factory was said to be up in some New England town where they’d been based for the last three hundred years.” Despite what he’s implied in interviews, Stephenson must have had the Baroque Cycle planned when he wrote Cryptonomicon.

3: Andrew Loeb’s hive-mind project involves doing away with traditional names and assigning arbitrary numerical designations to, well, everything in the universe. In other words, he’s re-creating something like Wilkins-Waterhouse Universal Philosophical Language. However, the RIST designations aren’t primes; we see 11A4 used, and that’s an even number.

Comments

[akicif.livejournal.com]

However, the RIST designations aren’t primes; we see 11A4 used, and that’s an even number

.Wasn't there something to do with products of primes for combined concepts in WWUPL? No, I thinking of something else entirely: 11a4 - assuming it's hex - doesn't factor nicely at all (2x2x1129 in decimal).