Cryptonomicon

"May I surf?" Randy asks, and Cantrell says, "Yes," without even turning around. Randy visits one of the big Web-searching sites, which takes a minute because the machine has to establish a Net connection first. Then he searches for Web documents containing the terms ((Andy OR Andrew) Loeb) AND "hive mind." As usual, the search finds tens of thousands of documents. But it's not hard for Randy to pick out the relevant ones.

WHY RIST 9303 IS A MEMBER IN GOOD STANDING OF THE CALIFORNIA BAR ASSOCIATION

RIST 11A4 has experienced ambivalent feelings over the fact that RIST 9E03 (insofar as s/he is construed, by atomized society, as an individual organism) is a lawyer. No doubt the conflicted feelings of RIST 11A4 are quite normal and natural. Part of RIST 11A4 abhors lawyers, and the legal system in general, as symptoms of the end-stage terminal disease of atomized society. Another part understands that disease can improve the health of the meme pool if it slays an organism that is old and unfit for ongoing propagation of its memotype. Make no mistake about it: the legal system in its current form is the worst imaginable system for society to resolve its disputes. It is appallingly expensive in terms of money and in terms of the intellectual talent that goes to waste pursuing it as a career. But part of RIST 11A4 feels that the goals of RIST 11A4 may actually be served by turning the legal system's most toxic features against the rotten body politic of atomized society and in so doing hasten its downfall.

Randy clicks on RIST 9E03 and gets

RIST 9E03 is the RIST that RIST 11A4 denotes by the arbitrarily chosen bit-pattern that, construed as an integer, is 9E03 (in hexadecimal notation). Click here for more about the system of bit-pattern designators used by RIST 11A4 to replace the obsolescent nomenclature systems of "natural languages." Click here if you would like the designator RIST 9E03 to be automatically replaced by a conventional designator (name) as you browse this web site.

Click.

From now on. the expression RIST 9E03 will be replaced by the expression Andrew Loeb. Warning: we consider such nomenclature fundamentally invalid, and do not recommend its use, but have provided it as a service to first-time visitors to this Web site who are not accustomed to thinking in terms of RISTs.

Click.

You have clicked on Andrew Loeb which is a designator assigned by atomized society to the memome of RIST 9E03 . .

Click.

memome is the set of all memes that define the physical reality of a carbon-based RIST. Memes can be divided into two broad categories: genetic and semantic. Genetic memes are simply genes (DNA) and are propagated through normal biological reproduction. Semantic memes are ideas (ideologies, religions, fads, etc.) and are propagated by communications.

Click.

The genetic part of the memome of Andrew Loeb shares 99% of its contents with the data set produced by the Human Genome Project. This should not be construed as endorsing the concept of speciation (i.e. that the continuum of carbon-based life forms can or should be arbitrarily partitioned into paradigmatic species) in general, or the theory that there is a species called "Homo sapiens" in particular.

The semantic part of the memome of Andrew Loeb is still unavoidably contaminated with many primitive viral memes, but these are being gradually and steadily supplanted by new semantic memes generated ab initioby rational processes.

Click.

RIST stands for Relatively Independent Sub-Totality. It can be used to refer to any entity that, from one point of view, seems to possess a clear boundary separating it from the world (as do cells in a body) but that, in a deeper sense, is inextricably linked with a larger totality (as are cells in a body). For example, the biological entities traditionally known as "human beings" are nothing more than Relatively Independent Sub-Totalities of the social organism in which they are embedded.

A dissertation written under the name Andrew Loeb, who is now designated RIST 9E03, indicates that even in those parts of RIST 0577 having temperate climates and abundant food and water, the life of an organism such as the type designated, in old meme-systems, as "Homo sapiens," would have been primarily occupied with attempting to eat other RISTs. This narrow focus would inhibit the formation of advanced semantic meme systems (viz, civilization as that word is traditionally construed). RISTs of this type can only attain higher levels of functioning insofar as they are embedded in a larger society, the most logical evolutionary end-point of which is a hive mind.

Click.

A hive mind is a social organization of RISTs that are capable of processing semantic memes ("thinking"). These could be either carbon-based or silicon-based. RISTs who enter a hive mind surrender their independent identities (which are mere illusions anyway). For purposes of convenience, the constituents of the hive mind are assigned bit-pattern designators.

Click.