Human Interactions

[Doug Millison]

Good points, re the larger scope of control. But I think we have 
crossed a threshold, however, with the help of technology.  I 
recommend the current book, _Database Nation_, for insight into the 
degree to which the information technology currently in place exceeds 
the possibilities for a kind of control that previously existed only 
in the most feverish fantasies of utopian writers.  Elsewhere, Mike 
Davis (Pynchon's fellow MacArthur genius grant recipient) sketches 
the urban environment that grows out of such technology.

Corporations are right now investing heavily (trillions of dollars) 
in information technology (especially Web-based database marketing 
and sales plus 'net-integrated communications and projects management 
infrastructure, and "executive dashboards" that will let managers 
fine-tune marketing programs in real-time for maximum impact)  that 
will allow them to, in fact, pull together the amazing spectrum of 
info-bits that they are already collecting via the Internet and other 
Networked Economy means, just in time to marry up with the 
globalization of corporate activity and consumption.  This is not 
sci-fi speculation, this is what many companies are building right 
now.

You're right, companies are, generally, still clumsy with the data 
they collect, and most of them  don't have the big picture yet 
(they'll get it from our book;  it is in fact the first to show them 
how to go about doing this), but some of the better-integrated 
Internet retailing operations (Amazon.com, for example) are very 
close to putting all the pieces together, and watch what happens over 
the next five years, 10 years max.  I disagree with you about 
corporations not being evil, however.  To name just one example -- 
when increasing cancer (and other life-threatening ills) among the 
population at large is no more than one variable on a spreadsheet 
calculation of corporate profits, and corporations make these sorts 
of calculations every day and continue practices that result in 
death, illness, environmental degradation (all the ills that Pynchon 
treats, in some detail, in GR  especially, and elsewhere),  I tend to 
call that evil.  I think you can make a good case that Pynchon is 
calling it evil, too, no matter how this notion of moral judgement 
and condemnation goes against the PoMo reading of his books.

(Control may turn out to be a two-way street, in the view of my 
writing partner, Michael Moon. Another point we make in our book is 
that, as a result of the interactive, digital technology 
infrastructure that corporations are currently building in order to 
deliver brand messages to and create relationships with customers, 
customers will have an unprecedented ability to reach back into 
corporations and demand that, in exchange for brand loyalty, the 
brand producer meet certain conditions -- the way, for example, 
college students have demanded that apparel manufacturers discontinue 
sweatshop production and other appalling labor conditions, if they 
want to sell their apparel with university logos attached; this is 
what recently drove Phil Knight, head of Nike, to withdraw an offer 
to fund an Oregon univeristy -- I forget which, it is his alma mater 
I believe -- to the tune of many tens of millions of dollars for new 
athletic facilities and programs.)

I think you have to go back to a time when religion absolutely 
dominated individual life (as described in the covenant law that God 
gives Moses and which is spelled out in numbing detail in  the Old 
Testament, to name one good example) before you'll see the confluence 
of exterior (priests, law codes, ritual, etc., back then; fad, 
fashion, style, consumptionist prescriptives across media, now) and 
interior (the Man's branch office in each of our heads,  "conscience" 
aided by internalized moral codes, back then; brand slogans and brand 
messages, now) controls that equal what the Networked Economy already 
permits... and it's only going to get worse.

We're clearly in GR territory, now.  Pynchon, to my way of thinking, 
captured very well what it means to be snared in this web of 
technology-enabled control. He shows the links of the then-current 
state of affairs (mid-20th century, culminating in the '60s) to 
earlier regimes wherein religion and myth served such ends.  By the 
time we get to Vineland and M&D, I think Pynchon's showing us how 
much we've advanced, with the aid of technology, into deeper and 
deeper levels of control by others -- corporations (M&D is very 
strong in its critique of the Corporation) primarily, and the 
governments they manage (Vineland).

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