If Stephenson's obsessions with the meaning of code weren't obvious enough from "Cryptonomicon," all one has to do is consider what Stephenson decided to do after finishing his humongous tome. He took a little "break" and dashed off a 40,000-word meditation on the cultural significance of computer operating systems, "In the Beginning was the Command Line." Not only does the essay illustrate just how logically "Cryptonomicon" follows from Stephenson's earlier work, but it also provides useful clues on how to view the evolution of Stephenson's entire body of work.

"Ever since the Mac came out," writes Stephenson, "our operating systems have been based on metaphors." But as Stephenson matured as a computer user, he found himself increasingly disenchanted with the metaphorical stuff that came between him and his computer. He abandoned the Mac-style point-and-click "graphical user interface" (GUI). Instead he opted for direct contact via text input at the "command line" prompt.

Stephenson's psychological transition was encouraged by his growing infatuation with the Linux operating system, the flag bearer of the so-called open-source software movement. "Open-source software" refers to software in which the underlying source code to a computer program is made freely accessible to all, rather than locked away from users as a proprietary corporate secret. For Stephenson, his change of operating system heart was a sign of upward evolution. He found it empowering and liberating to move from a metaphorical GUI desktop to a command-line interface, from closed code to open code.

Stephenson's last three novels follow a similar trajectory. In "Snowcrash" Stephenson won the enduring adulation of geeks everywhere by delivering two fabulously cool metaphors for what the computer could offer the world -- the Metaverse, an online reality in which hackers donned their favorite personas and acted out their fantasies, and the Librarian, a helpful digital entity, not unlike a real-life librarian, who is also a really, really neat way of imagining how we puny humans might some day be able to plumb the database of all recorded information. Then in "The Diamond Age," he went a step further, entrancing his readers with the "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer," a "smart" book that delivered lessons in life and computer theory disguised as interactive fairy tales, all with the intention of educating its young female owner in how to thrive in a treacherous world.

In "Cryptonomicon," Stephenson cuts to the chase. Instead of elaborate metaphors for how the computer works or might work, he brings us directly to ground zero: Alan Turing, the creator of the first digital computer, is even a character in "Cryptonomicon." As the novel flips back and forth across the last 50 years, we see both the birth of the computer and its current state-of-the-art implementation. Stephenson goes so far as to include actual code for an encryption algorithm in the text.

It's as if, after giving his readers a pair of advanced metaphor-based GUIs with which to contemplate the role of the computer in modern life, Stephenson has now decided to show us the "source" -- to deliver to us the truth about computing in all its raw, unblemished command-line beauty.

I lay out for him my painstakingly constructed analysis. What does he think? Is this a fair appraisal?

He nods his head briefly.

"That's a good analogy," he says. And then he pauses, waiting for the next question. (Lesson for would-be interviewers of geeks: Never ask them a yes-or-no question, because that's all you'll get in response.) But Stephenson does agree with the general thrust of my questions about the contradictory nature of code.

"That's the basic contradiction I'm trying to deal with here," says Stephenson. "There's always been this duality between secrecy and openness. The digital computer as we have it today was born in the attempt to deal with codes, to go into these impenetrable messages and bring back the information. In that time the codes that we were breaking were to us a sinister force. We had to break these codes or the bad guys were going to take everything over. Now, the computer is all about openness and spreading information to every corner of the world. But at the same time, we're finding that the more we do that, the more we are perceiving a need to encrypt our stuff, to keep it out of the hands of the bad guys."

It's a messy situation, especially for engineers and hackers used to thinking of the world in neat binary terms of ones and zeros, or as a set of problems that can all eventually be solved. The "open-source" advocates that Stephenson rhapsodizes about in his essay on operating systems are often the same people working hardest to ensure that individuals can keep their personal information private.

As our all too short interview comes to a close -- Stephenson doesn't want to keep a photographer waiting -- I try, again, to pull his novel and his essay into line with one another. I observe that the very same open-source hackers who are luxuriating in Stephenson's beloved command-line world are hard at work devising their own Macintosh-like GUIs. Isn't this going backwards, I ask him? To me, it seems that the gist of Stephenson's writing, his comments about the importance of science and technology and his enthusiasm for incorporating code and equations in his novel all add up to a strong authorial point of view stating that the world would be a better place if people were smarter about their relationship with computer technology. But those open-source hackers are busily striving to make it easier for people to be stupid.

Doesn't the world need more smart users, I ask Stephenson?

"I think we need an upgrade path," he answers. "I think we need a way to encourage people to become smart users."

Is "Cryptonomicon" part of that upgrade path? Showing people the "source" -- delivering to them the roots and history of computing culture -- is this Stephenson's contribution to social smartening-up?

"I can see where you are going," says Neal Stephenson. "It would make a nice wrap-up for your story. I don't know. I mean, the only way I could see that happening is if somehow this makes geek culture a little more accessible to people, so they don't feel like they are becoming some kind of monster as they learn how to use this kind of technology."

He is too modest -- a rare compliment to bestow upon a hacker. With "Cryptonomicon," Stephenson has embroidered the phrase "computer literacy" with a whole new layer of meaning. He has become the poet laureate of hacker culture. So why even bother with the dumb questions? Cut the book tour short and send this man back to Seattle. He's got some more writing to do.

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