Words&Dirt

“‘I shall see you, Daniel, on Parnassus, or wherever it is that Philosophers end up!’

‘I think they end up in old books,’ said Daniel, ‘and so I shall look for you, sir, in a Library.’

‘That is what I am building,’ said Leibniz, ‘and that is where you shall find me.  Good-bye, Daniel!’

‘Good-bye, Gottfried!’ Daniel shouted, and then stood and watched for some time as the boat became indistinct, and quite lost itself, in the welter of shipping in the Pool of London, there below the charred battlements of the Tower.  It was almost a mirror image of the way Leibniz had appeared, out of nowhere, forty-one years earlier, except that the mirror was a misty and a streaky one.  For much had changed in those years and Daniel could not watch with the clear eyes of a young man.”

––The System of the World, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 697

“Community is key when it comes to alternate reality games.  The synergy that occurs when a group of people accomplishes something that they could never have done individually is an amazing thing to see.  Without a community, the player base of a game can never achieve critical mass, so one of the challenges for these games is the need to depend on the players to be resourceful enough to set up their own space in which to work and coordinate efforts.”

––This is Not a Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming, by Dave Szulborski, loc. 1950