Stephenson:Neal:The Confusion:711:thin sheets of gold (Electricinca)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Leibniz's 1700 letter to Daniel.

It follows that you are the man best suited assemble and organize the data that our machine shall require, and to place it in a form that may be read and understood by a machine. This is a matter of assigning prime numbers to the symbols and then encoding them in some medium, probably as binary digits. The medium needs to be something enduring, for it may be generations before machines can be constructed that are capable of doing the work. Best would be thin sheets of gold.

Data encoded as binary digits on sheets of gold. Would this be the Leibniz Archive that features in the novel Cryptonomicon?

Daniel completes this project toward the end of the final volume of the Baroque Cycle The System of the World. It occurs to me that Leibniz's proposal would be the creation of a so-called “System of the World.”