GRGR(10) Control, and a Dostoevsky anecdote

[Juan Cires Martinez]

Of course, I also think that the questions about the real nature of
control and synthesis are unanswerable.  But thinking about them is
pretty interesting.  The obvious line of thought, to me, is about how
these two "technologies" are important in the development of industry.
And control is specially important in order to eliminate humans in the
control loop.  All manner of unmanned vehicles require the development
of sophisticated automatic control systems.

Control appears throughout GR, but one quote that we have already seen 
might be interesting in this light:

 "``It's control.  All these things arise from one difficulty: control.
  For the first time it was *inside*, do you see.  The control is put
  inside.  No more need to suffer passively under `outside forces' -- to
  veer into any wind.  As if ...
    ``A market needed no longer be run by the Invisible Hand, but now
  could *create itself* -- its own logic, momentum, style, from
  *inside*.  Putting the control inside was ratifying what de facto had
  happened -- that you had dispensed with God.  But you had taken on
  a greater, and more harmful, illusion.  The illusion of control.  That
  A could do B.  But that was false.  Completely.  No one can *do*.
  Things only happen, A and B are unreal, are names for parts that ought
  to be inseparable...''"  (p. 30?)

And now the Dostoevsky anecdote:  some time ago I asked a literature
professor about Pynchon and he said, literally, that Pynchon is a bad
imitation of Dostoevsky.  I don't remember in what sense.  So it doesn't
surprise me to see so much Dostoevsky in those lists...

Saludos, Juan.