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Societas Eruditorum

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This is an intermediate page for the Societas Eruditorum.

Stephensonia

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz says to Daniel Waterhouse he will set one up. Tsar Peter I is likely to get involved it seems ... Maybe the "dog and pony" show to sell him on the idea contains a wheelbarrow and hedges?

Authored entries

Origin

A society for the Continent that shares the goal and purpose of Royal Society — save for their governments.

Societas Eruditorum means something along the lines of "fellowship of the learned."

Solomon Kohan notes that Leibniz is Erudite, as is Daniel, while Solomon, Enoch, and unnamed others are Wise (which seems to correspond with Randy Waterhouse's comparisons to Tolkeinisms), and he is unsure what Newton is, Erudite or Wise. Ascribing the Societas Eruditorum to Germany alone would not correspond to its 20th century activities in opposition to Nazi Germany and the other axis powers. Being inducted into Societas Eruditorum instead seems to be more of an international brotherhood of the illuminated/enlightened.

  • eruditorum.org—in Cryptonomicon, it's the domain name owned by the Societas; here in the real world, it apparently points to a machine somewhere in Massachusetts. It is owned/administered by BestPractical.com (Best Practical Solutions LLC) in Somerville, MA. Their phone number is 1-617-812-0745. BestPracticals founder is Jesse Vincent, the author of RT: Request Tracker, a customer service application. Jesse's history working at his computing helpdesk sounds suspiciously like Randy Waterhouse's experience with the ILLP. He must be an NS fan. BestPractical was founded in 2001. They are a corporate sponsor of the Free Software Foundation and seem to be embedded in the "Forum of Incident Response and Security Team", a high level computer security organization.
  • Societas Eruditorum dot org also exists as a vaguely entertaining login that mixes Cryptonomicon with The Matrix but provides little or no information. (I have been having an email conversation with "Enoch Root" from this server of dubious worth. ML.) Whois indicates that the site is located in Canada, likely in or around Calgary, Alberta.