Foreword "Goofy Mustaches"

[davemarc]

Pynchon:

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."

MalignD
> > >
> > > 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.
>
I still don't see how Pynchon's assertion that the Internet is "a
development that promises social control on a scale those quaint old
twentieth-century tyrants with their goofy mustaches could only dream about"
justifies the remark that that "[t]he great man is apparently aging into a
paranoid crank."

Contrary to what has been suggested on this thread, Pynchon does not write
that the Internet is entirely evil, or exclusively a tool of repression.  He
simply states that it has the potential to be used for social control on a
scale only imagined by the likes of Hitler and Stalin.  (That Paul concurs
with this position makes his remark about Pynchon's mental state really
puzzling to me.)  Considering how those dictators used technology--including
forerunners of the Internet--as a means of mass oppression, Pynchon's
position makes plenty of sense.

The Internet, as I understand it, wasn't merely conceived as a place where
we can conduct flame wars--it was conceived by the US government as a way to
maintain control even after a nuclear catastrophe.  In other words, it was
created as a tool for social control.  Today it is probably a more powerful
influence around the globe than anyone had anticipated at that time.
Tomorrow it will probably be more influential.  It's easy for a rational
individual to imagine a dictator using that kind of technology as a force of
suppression or at least control.  That's all that Pynchon posits in the
paragraph under examination.

Paul writes, "It's 2003, nineteen years later, and none of Orwell's
nightmare has happened."  I disagree.  Setting aside the fact that Orwell's
novel is not a calendar (and that even within the novel, Winston is not even
sure that the year is really 1984), one can find many correlations between
practices in Oceania and those that exist in the post-Orwell world--not just
in the US and the UK, but all around the globe.

That said, I suggest that we try to limit our discussion of the 1984
foreword until sometime after the publication date, when more participants
have had a chance to read and think about the entire introduction as well as
the novel.  Those who haven't read 1984 in a while might be surprised by
their experience reading it today, especially with Pynchonian themes in
mind.

d.