Cryptonomicon
Cryptonomicon is a novel by
Neal Stephenson. Go is referred to in a scene where a character uses a
goban as a prop in a speech.
JennyRadcliffe: Disappointingly, however (I was very excited when I started the paragraph and realised it was about Go), it does not seem to indicate any great knowledge of Go and indeed displays a rather gross ignorance, at least, in my reading of it.
The section is on page 318 of the Arrow paperback edition (ISBN: 0-09-941067-2), and includes a small description of the game as a metaphor for free speech, telecomms and cryptography. Sadly, it is, well, ignorant. It says that "at the beginning of the game, the pieces are arranged in a pattern that is simple and easy to understand", which is surely only true in a fixed-handicap game, and goes on to say that each move is "fairly simple in and of itself, and made for reasons that can be easily understood, even by a novice" which I think all of us who've looked at, say, Cho Chikun's games will know is broadly nonsensical. Finally, he says that the game develops "such great complexity that only the finest minds - or the finest computers - can comprehend it", and of course, we all know how the finest computers play Go ...
Any one of these errors can be explained, and is, I suppose, "sort of" true, but cumulatively, it looks as though Stephenson is choosing an example which he knows will resonate with a subset of his target audience (geeks, nerds, hackers, etc.) without actually understanding it.
--
David: While I haven't read the book, only the
excerpt on the web site, I
think it's noteworthy that a private's name is "Gowicki" --
could it be a sly reference to Sensei's Library?
- The first edition of Cryptonomicon was printed in April 1999, well over a year before Sensei's Library existed.
David: A prophecy, then. Even better!
Peter: remembering the bit (Jenny has my copy of the book) It is the sultan speaking. Is the author ignorant? Is he making the sultan appear ignorant? Is the sultan dumbing things down to help get his point across? Is the sultan assuming the Americans will not know about Go? How much does the sultan know about Go? Could there be this suggestion that the "finest computers" aren't built yet? What does the sultan mean by novice? (30-kyu, 1-Dan)
In another bit of the book, Stephenson comes up with the idea of "factally weird" in relation to one of the characters, meaning that a little bit of the characters life is, when considered in detail, as odd as the whole of his life. personally, I feel that Stephenson's writing is factally complex, and considerion of one bit suggests that that bit is as complex as the whole book.
Velobici: Peter uses the phrase "factally weird"...weird. Does he mean "factually weird", weird regarding the facts of (Andrew's) life or does he mean to say "fractally weird", conveying the concept that each examined in detail retains the same level of weirdness as the whole? "Factually weird" gets about 35,000 hits in Google whereas "Fractally weird" gets about 1350 hits in
Google.
Zarlan: ...and what does Google have to do with anything?
Velobici: The two Google searches demonstrates that both "factually weird" and "fractally weird" are not unknown turns of speech and that "factually weird" appears to much more common than "fractally weird". So either phrase is extant in English. Furthermore, in a work of fiction, anything is possible. :)
Zarlan: To demonstrate that, you should point to at dictionary or something like that. Google searches can give results on anything that is written on any page (of the 8058 million pages in it's index) on the internet. Being good at english isn't a requirement for makeing a homepage you know. Heck, even a retarded idiot can make a homepage and many of them do (although they aren't necessarily bad at english). I got 52 hits on "factally" in google, although I fail to get a single one in dictionarys.
Velobici: The
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) collects together definitions, first usage information, variant spellings and much more. All this comes from the raw data...what is written and published both today and previously. I do not know that the OED staff has started to collect data from the Internet, but I would bet that before the end of this decade (written in 2005) the OED staff will be analyzing Internet only and Internet primarily sourced documents for their analysis of how English is changing. Google gives us a fast, easy, inexpensive look at English as it is used today. It would be quite pleasant to have an OED or access to one. Unfortunately, the price is prohibative for me personally as I do not require it for my work. Rather spend the money on Go Books, lessons, tournaments and the US Go Congress. ($1 per day on a monthly basis or $300 per year for online access only. CDRom version 250 GBP.)
Bob McGuigan: You might be able to access the on-line OED at a library. Certainly at a college or university and maybe even at a well equipped public library.
Zarlan:
http://www.dictionary.com,
http://www.britannica.com/...
Velobici: Zarlan, did you check dictionary.com?
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=fractally%20weird. Did you try to look up 'fractally' at dictionary.com? Britannica is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, and certainly not a research dictionary. Have you used an OED? Are you aware of the wealth of information regarding the evolution of words that it contains? Do you expect that dictionary.com or Britannica provide vaguely similar material? I, for one, am quite dismayed.
Zarlan: Did I check dictionary.com? I'm not realy sure (I think I did). I do know the difference between an encyclopedia and a dictionary. Britannica may be an encyclopedia, but there is a dictionary search on the page as well. And no, I have, regretfully, not yet had the pleasure of looking up words in an Oxford English Dictionary (and judgeing by what you say, it would be a pleasure indeed. I like dictionaries and I could spend hours reading in encyclopedias, though I quit doing that after I read most things of interest in those we have). I would like to point out that I was only pointing out that such pages exist.
I meant "fractally weird", sorry -Peter
Stefan: The quality of the go-related reference is not fractally representative for the entire book: it is excellent, like most of Stephenson's writing.