Foreword "Goofy Mustaches"

[Paul Mackin]

On Fri, 2003-04-25 at 15:43, davemarc wrote:
> 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.

Yes, David, but look at the calendar. It's 2003, nineteen  years later, and
none of Orwell's nightmare has happened.

"1984" was what is known as a self-negating prophesy. It projects into
the future what COULD  happen provided nothing occurs or nobody steps in
to act as countervailing forces. Tbe fact of the matter is, things
happen on BOTH sides of the equation.

OK,.let's be Pynchonean for a second and divide the world into "them"
and "us."  But why does the next step have to be that "them" get smarter
and smarter and "us" get dumber and dumber. Maybe the reverse might
happen once in a while.

There's no question the Internet COULD be a force for repression, and
they will not doubt try to use it for that purpose, but the Internet
will also, as far as anyone can see, be a great disperser of knowledge.
You can find out important useful information--survival information--in
a few seconds now that would have been, for all practical purposes,
inaccessible a few years ago.

Pynchon writes great novels.

P.