It’s not very relevant to the book itself, as not much made it in. There are only a few things, as far as I can tell: definitively answering that “Ita” was an acronym for “information technology assistance” (the novel says it was lost to history), and an HTML comment, invisible in the browser but available if you view page source, that provides a hint about Rhetor praxis.
Re: Arbre’s history, I can do some stuff on that (published a minor history post today).
For the downwick implications on our world, I think correlations” probably makes more sense to talk about. I think the rhymes between Arbre’s history and Earth’s (Rome/Baz, “counter-bazian”/protestantism, etc.) probably happen on Arbre for the same reasons they happen on Earth. Similarly, they would happen to other worlds immediately upwick, between-wick, and downwick from them. I’m not sure what the ultimate source would be, though, any more than I could say what the ultimate source was for the Euclidean/Pythagorean cnoöns that flowed through both Arbre and Earth.
An exploration of Old Orth. I heard someone’s creating it from the information in the book??
There’s unfortunately not enough information in the book to really explore it. On www.nealstephenson.com/acknowledgments, if you look for the name “Jeremy Bornstein”, there is a link to Notes on Orth (https://monastic.org/orth/language.html). That provides some fun stuff.
It’s not very relevant to the book itself, as not much made it in. There are only a few things, as far as I can tell: definitively answering that “Ita” was an acronym for “information technology assistance” (the novel says it was lost to history), and an HTML comment, invisible in the browser but available if you view page source, that provides a hint about Rhetor praxis.
A timeline of Arbre'e history. Where possible, show the downwick implications on our world.
Maybe something similar for philosophers and schools of thought.
Re: correlates between Arbre and Earth, the Anathem wiki has a pretty good page (you’ve probably already seen it, but I think it’s exhaustive or close to exhaustive): https://anathem.fandom.com/wiki/Earth–Arbre_Correlations
Re: Arbre’s history, I can do some stuff on that (published a minor history post today).
For the downwick implications on our world, I think correlations” probably makes more sense to talk about. I think the rhymes between Arbre’s history and Earth’s (Rome/Baz, “counter-bazian”/protestantism, etc.) probably happen on Arbre for the same reasons they happen on Earth. Similarly, they would happen to other worlds immediately upwick, between-wick, and downwick from them. I’m not sure what the ultimate source would be, though, any more than I could say what the ultimate source was for the Euclidean/Pythagorean cnoöns that flowed through both Arbre and Earth.