Neal Stephenson @ Slashdot

Josh points to a Slashdot interview with Neal Stephenson that's very much worth reading, if only for the accounts of his fighting with William Gibson. There's also this riff on bookstores:

There was a time maybe five years ago when many people were questioning whether brick-and-mortar bookstores were going to survive the onslaught of online retailers. Now, if you take the narrow view that a bookstore is nothing more than a machine that swaps money for books, then it follows that there's no need for a physical store. But here we are five years later. Some bookstores have gone out of business, it's true. But there are big, beautiful bookstores all over the place, with sofas and coffee bars and author appearances and so on. Why? Because it turns out that a bookstore is a lot more than a machine that swaps money for books.

Computers... the world... not the same. Got it? Any questions?