Oedipa caught in "The Net"?

[Brian Stonehill Media Studies Pomona College]

Hi friends,

An attractive young woman is on her own on the edges of Los Angeles, looking
for information about a secretive and disruptive organization.  At one point,
while she's staying in a motel, her former shrink comes by and tries once more
to seduce her, since they've had an affair in the past.  One by one, the men
she's been close to are picked off, and the organization seems to know
absolutely everything about her and her habits.

Sound familiar? This is the plot of "The Net," Irwin Winkler's latest entry in
Hollywood's cyberwave, starring Sandra Bullock and with Dennis Miller as the
sexually meddling shrink.  There's much more than this going on in both works,
obviously, but the inescapable kinship between _The Crying of Lot 49_ and this
really quite good movie gave it a whole other level of enjoyment for me.  (The
movie's bad guy, Jeff Gregg, pretty clearly echoes Bill Gates, by the way.  His
fiendishly marketed program, "Gatekeeper," even sounds a lot like...  Windows
95.)

The only (thoroughly non-Pynchonesque) downside to the movie is that it's full
of product placements, esp. by Fed Ex and Apple.

Has this struck anyone else, or are they just targeting me?

Chow,  Brian