IBM monotheism (try again)

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I apologize for the sloppy focus of the previous version of this post .
. .

A recent article by Thomas Frank . . .

<http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0FQP/4519_130/69391563/p1/article.jhtml?term=%22Thomas+Frank%22>

"Business is the new religion; in an extraordinary historical reversal,
those who oppose it are arrogant elitists, frustrating the people's will.

"In 1998, a commercial for IBM's Lotus division danced across American
television screens to the tune of REM's Nietzschean anthem, "I Am
Superman". As throngs of humanity went about their business, a tiny
caption asked: "Who is everywhere?" In response, IBM identified itself
both with the people and with the name of God as revealed to Moses: the
words "I Am" scrawled roughly on a piece of cardboard and held aloft
from amid the madding crowd. The questions continued, running down the
list from omnipresence to omniscience and omnipotence -- "Who is
aware?", "Who is powerful?" -- while scenes of entrepreneurial
achievement pulsated by: an American business district, a Chinese
garment factory, a microchip assembly room, and the seat of divine
judgement itself, the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. "I
can do anything," sang a winsome computer voice."

I post this as an example of "monoculture" that perhaps illustrates the
"evil" of IBM and Disney and Miscrosoft and (yes!) state-sanctioned
religion. They aren't evil inherently, can even be harmless if not
valuable parts of our lives, but it is the attitude, that urge, that
psychosis to be the one, the only arbiter and purveyor of all we are,
do, and think that is evil and must be opposed.

Pynchon's ambivalence, seeing how compromised we all are and how that
might not be so bad (not many of us are ready to go "off the grid"), is
not an excuse to let them all off the hook. These monocultural entities,
after all, have no ambivalence about their purpose (money and power), so
we have to complicate their existence a bit, counter their simple-minded salvation.

Does Slothrop confound his watchers not so much by disappearing but by
ultimately not rising to Their bait, by choosing to seek himself as NOT
defined by Them? Is this why he fades from view at the end of the book,
because at some level we as readers are participating in Their program?
Is the Author with Them? How then did Slothrop get away from Him? Did
the Creator include Corruption in His Plan that His Creatures may will
themselves free of Him? Did He not also then create that will that takes
His Creatures away from Him? Are we as Readers on the side of the Author
or do we too yearn to breathe free? Or both, in the great arc of The Experience?

Yours,
Eric R