Is it OK to be a Luddite?

[Otto]

> I intended cranky to mean eccentric, as did Pynchon in the first paragraph
> of the essay itself.  The essay is full of dubious and unqualified
> assertions, some of which function as begged questions in his argument.
>

He applies cranky to the Snow-affair 25 years before. I don't see "dubious
and unqualified assertions" in his essay.

> He begins with a muddy discussion of C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures," writing
> in a paragraph that seems both wrong and at odds with itself:
>

No, he talks about the reception of Snow:
"to some already simplified points, further reductions were made, provoking
certain remarks, name-calling, even intemperate rejoinders, giving the whole
affair, though attenuated by the mists of time, a distinctly cranky look"

> "Today nobody could get away with making such a distinction [between
> literary and scientific].  Since 1959, we have come to live among
> flows of data more
> vast than anything the world has seen. ... We immediately suspect ego
> insecurity in people who may still try to hide behind the jargon of a
> specialty or pretend to some data base forever 'beyond' the reach of a
> layman."
>
> I would argue that more often the opposite is true, that the authority of
> the specialist is ascendant as is the respect accorded it.
>

Yes, you may be right in this in many cases. We "should" "immediately
suspect ego insecurity" would've been the better formulation.

> He goes on:  "Anybody with the time, literacy, and access fee can get
> together with just about any piece of specialized knowledge s/he may need.
> So, to that extent, the two-cultures quarrel can no longer be sustained."
>
> Access, time, and literacy, may facilitate getting together with
> specialized knowledge, but it is of scant help to the generalist
> in understanding it.
>
> He then says:  "As a visit to any local library or magazine rack will
> easily
> confirm, there are now so many more than two cultures that the problem has
> really become how to find the time to read anything outside one's own
> specialty."
>
> So, unless I misunderstand, having argued that access has closed the gap
> between the two worlds, he now argues that the problem is many worlds, not
> merely two.  In general, the paragraph is incoherent.
>

You do misunderstand. The coherence is that with the two-worlds distinction
"nobody could get away" nowadays because of the many "worlds" that have
occured.

> In any event, he soon drops this argument to discuss the history and myth
> of
> Ned Lud and the stocking frame
> and, from there, rapidly and somewhat
> aimlessly segues, via Byron's being a pro-Luddite, to Mary Shelley and
> Frankenstein, the origins of the gothic novel, and to modern science
> fiction,
> in the context of which he makes this remarkable comment:
>
> "This [genre novels being labeled "escapist fare"] is especially
> unfortunate
> in the case of science fiction, in which the decade after Hiroshima saw
> one
> of the most remarkable flowerings of literary talent and, quite often,
> genius, in our history.  It was just as important as the Beat movement
> going
> on at the same time, certainly more important than mainstream fiction,
> which
> with only a few exceptions had been paralyzed by the political climate of
> the
> cold war and McCarthy years."
>

He doesn't drop anything. He stays on topic from the first to the last
sentence.

> I have no idea who he imagines these sci/fi geniuses to be, but a list of
> the
> "paralyzed" mainstream writers working in the fifties would without
> exhaustion include: Faulkner, Thomas Mann, Nabokov, Celine, Beckett,
> Flannery
> O'Conner, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Terry Southern, Ralph
> Ellison, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Flann
> O'Brien.
>

This is your list -- none of those names can be found in the essay.
Beckett, Nabokov and Mailer are no mainstream -- for me they could be the
exceptions Pynchon is speaking about. Maybe you should read a little SF, for
example the recently mentioned Frank Herbert or the Strugatzkis, to get the
idea. I could name several great SF-authors I consider far more important
than Th. Mann.

> Then on to politics.  He writes:  "... Eisenhower prophesied when he left
> office, there is now a permanent power establishment of admirals, generals
> and corporate CEO's, up against whom us average poor bastards are
completely
> outclassed ....  We are all supposed to keep tranquil and allow it to go
on
> ..."  Well, no; Eisenhower famously said to "beware" the
military/industrial
> complex, not to "keep tranquil and allow it to go on."
>

Actually Pynchon says: "although Ike didn't put it quite that way. We are
all supposed to keep tranquil and allow it to go on, even though, because of
the data revolution, it becomes every day less possible to fool any of the
people any of the time." I think this makes your error clear.

> He offers without comment that the factory system "had been extended to
> include the Manhattan project," which seems to me another questionable
> assertion.   The Manhattan project, however unfortunate its outcome, was
> mainly a harnessing of scientific talent in three countries to a specific
> project in very particular circumstances.  There was an assigning of roles
> and tasks, but that was undoubtedly true in the building of the pyramids
> and owes little to the technology of mass production.
>

This is the crucial point which puts the United States in one line with the
nazis, and this makes this essay "disturbing" for Americans I believe.

> He says, in a paragraph with a reference to Auschwitz, "an unblinking
> acceptance of a holocaust running to seven- and eight-figure body counts
> has
> become -- among those who, particularly since 1980, have been guiding our
> military policies -- conventional wisdom," a reckless and inflammatory
> statement.  One doesn't like to be in the position of defending the
> members
> of our military establishment, but one must assume that by "holocaust,"
> given
> the proximity of his reference to Auschwitz, Pynchon means systematic
> racial
> slaughter.  Whatever else I may think of him, I don't believe Colin
> Powell,
> say, morally equivalent to Hitler nor that he reckons the extermination of
> tens of millions without blinking an eye.
>

In 1984 there was no Colin Powell but another government in the USA that was
ready, willing and able to drop the bomb on everybody, even on "friendly"
nations
like Germany in case of a Soviet attack.

In referring to Auschwitz Pynchon doesn't mean "systematic racial slaughter"
but he's talking about slaughter on an industrial scale. Where do you see
the words "race" or "Jews"?
You think all those ICBM's are an expression of mental sanity?

In the "Slow Learner"-intro (in the same year as the essay in question) he
says: "(...) that succession of the criminal insane who have enjoyed power
since 1945," -- this is how many people feel about the world's governments
in general.

> He writes, again without qualification, "The word 'Luddite' continues to
> be applied with contempt to anyone with doubts about technology,
> especially the nuclear kind," an odd claim.  The term has never been
> in common parlance (in the article itself Pynchon asks "what is a Luddite,
> anyway?") and, just as often, I would venture, it is nuclear advocates and
> not those with doubts who
> are deemed out of step with the times.
>

An odd claim? It's coming up again now as we're discussing genetic
engineering. "Luddism" may be uncommon, but the word "Maschinenstürmer" is
common German.

> As to Luddites today, Pynchon writes:  "What is the outlook for Luddite
> sensibility?  Will mainframes attract the same hostile attention as
> knitting
> frames once did?  I really doubt it," a conclusion that renders irrelevant
> most of what the article purports to be about..
>
> There's more, but that's most of it.

I think his question is not so dumb as you want to make it. In my opinion he
sees the danger that the possible negative effects of mainframes might be
not so obvious to the people as the ones of the knitting frames were.

At the same time he sees the possibility that information technology can be
used to increase freedom.

I think in his view some more critical thoughts on uncontrolled use of
technology would be appropriate for those "Liberty lads o'er the sea."

Otto

these links have been posted before:
http://www.ludditereader.com/
"TLR.is the website for the technology dysphoric, phobic, paranoiac, and the
merely cranky. It features selected books, films, music, and other resources
for folks who would like to turn their backs on technology, if only they
could be sure that it would not sneak up on them so."
http://www.luddites.com/index2.html
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http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/luddite.html
The Neo-Luddite Reaction