I'm curious why people still throw around this essay even though Stephenson said he changed his view on the topic.

Of course the points made are still valid but they are by no means absolute truth and never were.

A question and a comment.

Q: Do you have a source for the change in viewpoint?

Comment: Just because an author changes his views, doesn't mean that other people don't still agree with what was written. Authors don't get to tell people how to interpret and understand their writings.

Actually, scratch that last bit - As the author of this comment, what it really means is that you love it and should send me lots of dollars in gratitude.

Source: see question 8 here: http://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson-r...

Comment: I fully agree that a change of opinion does not invalidate the old argument. I thought I made that clear, but apparently I was wrong.

What Stephenson changed his view on primarily was his choice of OS, mostly because OS X offered most of the power of UNIX while also presenting a user-friendly GUI. I believe he's had a few things to say on this since (principally that he's increasingly less happy with OS X) though I don't have any specific links at the moment.