Foreword "Goofy Mustaches"

[davemarc]

Malignd:


> <<... most notably the Internet, a development that
> promises social control on a scale those quaint old
> twentieth-century tyrants with their goofy mustaches
> could only dream about.">>
>
> So Pynchon sees the Internet not as the life-enhancing
> technology most of us find it to be, but rather as a
> method for government control.
>
> The great man is apparently aging into a paranoid
> crank.
>
Paul Mackin:

"I was wondering when someone would notice that."

davemarc:

I can't believe Paul and Malignd are unable to see how the Internet could be
used for social control by tyrants of the ilk of Hitler, Stalin, and even
Saddam Hussein.  It's easy:  Just take note of what those dictators did with
the technologies that preceded the Internet, and imagine what they could
have done with the Internet.  For an added bonus, look at 1984 for analogous
technology and see how Orwell anticipated its use for social control.

d.