More questions about Anathem

[jack]

I think "small handheld computers/communication devices" is something which is likely to be reinvented in most worlds. But there's any number of variants on the theme. Do they primarily talk to relay stations a few meters away? Or a few miles? or in orbit? Do you need separate devices for separate networks? Do people mostly use text, or voice, or something else? Are they more like standalone computers or more like terminals? Even in our current world, there are variants in different places.

And yet in Anathem, the "jeejahs" seem to exactly mirror mobile phones and tablets of the time it was written. I realise, there's supposed to be a certain amount of "our world imitating theirs" but wouldn't it make more sense to write a world that makes *more* sense, and let the stuff our world is obsessed with be an imperfect reflection of that?

Also, what's with the parking ramp dinosaur? Apparently millennials with incanter powers "fixed" it? Where did it come from? Was it a side effect of some other world-changing sorcery? Did rhetors have some way of changing the world not just people's minds?

The "dinosaur" or "dragon" fake fossil seems to be a reference to young-earth creationism mentioned elsewhere. Is that just coincidence, or is there a suggestion that other fossils were created by sorcery, not representing a legitimate fossil record? Or was *that* just chance, but it *inspired* those theories in that world and this one?

Were weird incanter powers used for other stuff before the third sack?

How come no-one obsessively summarises all this stuff so I don't need to work it out for myself?