On the eve of the publication of Anathem , Wired just posted the first profile I’ve seen in a long while on author Neal Stephenson. Highlights: the steel helmet he’s constructing in his basement, his extracurricular research on brain surgery tools, and the influence of the Long Now Foundation on his new novel:

“I could never get that idea, the notion that society in general is becoming aliterate, out of my head,” [Stephenson] says. “People who write books, people who work in universities, who work on big projects for a long time, are on a diverging course from the rest of society. Slowly, the two cultures just get further and further apart.”