Internet Perfidity

[Peter Mead]

Peter Giordano wrote:
> 
> I am posting another article on the bogus Vonnegut speech - I find it a
> telling lesson on the issue I've been discussing regarding veracity on the
> internet and the importance of check sources.

And wandering a bit from your point but smiling and agreeing all the
while I write:

The internet is just a big carrier wave now graphically interfaced to
reach subhuman levels.  All those data aberrations we foolish mortals so
involve ourselves with just have more bandwidth.  We're "connected"
man.  Everything is connected. I personally have never cared what
Richard Gere does or doesn't do with gerbils, though I have listened to
serious people tell me earnestly that a sister of a friend worked in an
emergency room and...yada yada. I didn't bother to investigate the
veractiy because I Don't Care. We want the Internet to be a complete
world, but it is a big telephone party line with the same veracity.  


> I would add second Number two above - What is remarkable is how much people
> want to believe 

Less so than how much they want to take on the communication and pass it
along, capturing some of its effect for themselves.

> And the act of selling
> off stories and fables about the "real" Pynchon only serves to underscore
> exactly what Pynchon warns us of in his writing -

Pynchon's work is full of urban folk lore.  The albino alligators, the
truck full of parrots to name two but the list runs into the scores. 
His writing indicates (to me) an awareness of our tendency toward
consensual hallucination, which is what Gibson called Cyberspace, which
is the internet. Jeez, it IS all connected!


Peter Mead

Uncle Victor: ...I say this country has been too harsh in its outright
condemnation of war.  I say you can point to many material advantages
brought about by a crisis and conflict policy.  Hell, World War II gave
us the ballpoint pen.  That's common knowledge.