Slothop the Rat

[jbor]

It's interesting that the negative side of this issue gets restricted to
science and technology, while other forms of social control which have much
the same effect on determining human behaviour are viewed as benign or
legitimate. I think that while the idea of remote control humans does get
some attention in Pynchon's work - with Bongo-Shaftsbury pretending to be
"an electro-mechanical doll" and frightening Mildred on the train to
Damanhur in _V._, SHOCK and SHROUD, V herself, and with Jamf's experiments
with Slothrop's infantile erections in _GR_ etc - I think that he
foregrounds other types of social conditioning which are even more insidious
and just as nasty. Slothrop's Protestant/US inheritances which he can't
shake; what happens when a written language is introduced to a community
(the police commissioner gets killed); the way that mob mentality affects
people (panic, violence, mindless loyalty to charismatic leaders, like Weed
Atman, and vapid slogans); the way fathers "infect" their sons with notions
of war and heroic self-sacrifice; the psychological effects of television
(Frenesi's uniform fetish, the Thanatoids); Pokler getting caught up in the
romantic ideology of rocketry and Nazism; human sexual urges (Katje and
Blicero); and so on ad infinitum. It's not just scientists who are trying to
control people: priests and ideologues (and authors) have been doing it for
aeons. In this respect I think that the pretensions and complexity of
Pynchon's fiction are somewhat greater than those of an sf author like Dick.

While the ethical questions with the rat again revolve around the intentions
and the future effects behind the development of the technology rather than
with the technology itself, I agree that it's all a bit creepy. Then again,
I've been conditioned by much literature and film and a humanist upbringing
to regard robots as creepy: the only "good" androids are those who aspire to
be like "humans" etc. But when you look at the balance sheet of history, as
I think Pynchon does, humans come out as pretty cold-blooded and cruel, too.
And if, as an extreme rationalist like Chomsky says, humans are "pre-wired"
(for language, but by implication for other behaviours and definitively
"human" characteristics as well, I think it's fair to suggest) to begin
with, then what's the difference? (A notion of "God", I suspect.)

best



on 4/5/02 4:54 AM, cj hurtt at cjhurtt at hotmail.com wrote:

> 
> this story dove tails nicely into the one about the guy at oxford who just
> became the first "cyborg". both of these projects do have the potential to
> help disabled people, but god they're creepy. besides since when is the
> dept. of defense interested in helping people do something other than kill
> or die?
> it would seem that because of the control issue remote control critters (and
> maybe one day people) would be more of a bioethical controversy than say
> cloning. ugh.
> of course, remobilizing paralyzed people would be more than great.
> well, off to find a phillip k dick universe to crawl into...less creepy
> there.
> 
>> It's funny that the news media are heralding this as a boon for future
>> search and rescue mission for, say, people buried in collapsed buildings.
>> Sure.
>> 
>> It's actually not a new thing.  My freshman psych 101 class (back in 1976)
>> showed us a film of a cat w/ a wire attached to its head.  They could make
>> it jump, sit, etc.  That scared me way back then.  The only thing new about
>> this rat is that it's remote controled, which is of course the logical next
>> step.
>> 
>> I have heard one potential positive use for this technology: paralyzed
>> people could be made mobile again.  But I think that will require far more
>> extensive wiring beyond the brain.
>> 
>> David Morris
>