neal stephenson video chat

this is the sweet screenshot I got.  pretty much summed up the visual appeal of the whole experience.

good reads invited me to a pretty cool web event--a video chat with neal stephenson.  as he is one of my all-time favorite authors, i figured this would be very interesting.

turns out that neal is so cerebral, he makes for a very dry interview.  in the right hands, this can produce a lot of insights.  in the wrong hands, it can be devestatingly boring (as one of my fellow chattsers posted).

guess which one we got?

the interviewer was uber-nerdy.  ok, i get that the odds of getting someone with conan o'brien's charisma (or, say, conan himself) to be deep on neal stephenson are very, very slim.  still, get someone with a bit of personality.  this was like watching a high school news production on public access channel 7 in 1987.