Human Interactions

[JEANNIE BERNIER]

I sent a longer rant somewhat along this subject line, but let's face it,
even if Amazon has all the parts in place, they can still only affect what I
do on their site.  They don't have info on what I was doing on B&N's site.
Now if they build a partnership with B&N that's another matter, but, in the
long run, this may actually benefit me as a customer - as you say, the more
interaction we have with corporations (as opposed to the old model of
passive one-way communication) then the more voice consumers have to bite
back and say, if you want my business you must do XYZ.  



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Millison [mailto:millison at online-journalist.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2000 4:21 PM
> To: 'pynchon-l at waste.org'
> Subject: Re: Human Interactions
> 
> 
> 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).
> 
> -- 
> 
> d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  
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