“The world has actually been wired together by digital communications systems for a century and a half. Nothing that has happened during that time compares in its impact to the first exchange of messages between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan in 1858. That was so impressive that a mob of celebrants poured into the streets of New York and set fire to City Hall.”

— Neal Stephenson

"Mother Earth Mother Board," cover story in Wired, 4.12 (1996)

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American science fiction writer 1959

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