Having rewatched ↑“Brazil” and talking about bureaucracy going rampant, this one’s well overdue. When years ago I for the first time read Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon” (↵Stephenson 1999)—in my opinion by far his best book—I especially was delighted by this passage:  Randy grew up in a college town in eastern Washington State, graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle, and landed a Clerk Typist II job at the library there—specifically the Interlibrary Loan Department—where his job was to process incoming loan requests mailed in from smaller libraries all over the region and, conversely, to mail out requests to other … Continue reading →