Neal Stephenson coins a useful word Amistics in his novel Seveneves:
… it was a question of Amistics, which was a term that had been coined ages ago by a Moiran anthropologist to talk about the choices that different cultures made as to which technologies they would, and would not, make part of their lives. The word went all the way back to the Amish people … All cultures did this, frequently without being consciously aware that they had made collective choices.
Related post by Kevin Kelly: Amish Hackers
I’m curious to hear how much you like Seveneves. It’s far and away my LEAST favorite Stephenson novel.
I liked Seveneves a lot except for the horrible plot flaw (that gave rise to the significance of the title…). But no, not his absolute best.
I thought it was a lot worse that my two favorite Stephenson novels, “Anathem” and “Cryptonomicon”. But overall I liked it better than”Snow Crash”. The main problem for me was the huge walls of expository text; really breaks the flow.