> And 5 years before Cryptonomicon there was Tim May's Cyphernomicon (which obviously inspired the title and theme of Stephenson's book).

Actually, no, according to Stephenson. From the appendix of my copy of Cryptonomicon:

"It has been pointed out that the word "Cryptonomicon" bears obvious similarities to "Cyphernomicon," which is the title of a Cyperpunk FAQ document by Tim May. This leads to the question: am I committing some form of plagiarism, or rendering homage, or what? The answer, strangely enough, is niether. I was completely unaware of the existence of Tim May's Cyphernomicon at the time I came up with "Cryptonomicon."

I read that too, and I don't want to doubt Stephenson's word, but it's very hard to believe that he hadn't run across Cyphernomicon or the Cypherpunks (hell, they were on the cover of Wired Issue #1.02) in researching crypto for Cryptonomicon. Maybe he forgot he did but the term stuck in his subconscious. Or maybe he really didn't do even basic research before coming up with the name?

PS. Yes, I am the commenter previously known as anarky. No idea why that account got banned after a single comment.

Walter Jon Williams' "Hardwired", 1986. Protagonist had billions of dollars on a chip that he had implanted in his body for safekeeping. I thought "that will never work." He also had people jacked in to the stock market, getting 10-second loans to trade with. I thought that would happen one day, but we just have algorithms doing that for us.

Please don't just copy & paste comments from hell-banned users and pass them off as your own. They may have been hell-banned for a reason, but this is still unacceptable style.

qengho is probably anarky creating a new account and starting again.

Since anarky was hell banned after a single innocuous comment (unless there are things that were so awful they got deleted) it seems fair enough.