VLVL2 (1) Zoyd's JERK

[Terrance]

 Zoyd may be  "working" for the government, but as a transfenestrator
his role in the
> Vineland economy is to give the video-hungry broadcasters something to
> shoot. He's a content provider. It's the back side of the Tube's pervasive
> penetration into daily life: with (at least) 86 channels on 24 hours a day
> there's a lot of airtime to fill, which is why we get TV movies like Pia
> Zadora in The Clara Bow Story and news that consists of a guy in a dress
> jumping through a sugar-glass window.

With so many channels on 24-7 the Tube industry needs content. Where are
they going to get it? 

A clock on every wrist. A Tube in every room of the house. A car in
every driveway. 

A camera in every hand? 

Sure beats the hell out of a gun in every hand. Right? 

Yeah, the backside of Tube penetration is a penis in every hand. 

 America jerking itself off. 

How can we get a camera in every house in America? 

And why do we all need a camera anyway? 

What do Americans have to report? 

And who are they reporting to? 

What are they reporting? 

Are they getting paid for this reporting? 


The government pays Zoyd to "jump." He works for them.   Who or what is
paying the guys at channel 86?  In other words, who are they working
for? 

Are they working for the government too? 

The backside of the Tube's penetration. Yeah, that's great! 

This not only replaces police surveillance with the
public's own self-surveillance, but turns the public into
instruments of law enforcement, extending the law's force,
and the sense of power that 
accompanies it, to ordinary people (tellingly, America's
Most Wanted's subtitle is "America Fights Back").
Children in school are encouraged to turn in their parents
for drug use, and "video vigilantism" runs rampant, with
video cameras, both hidden and openly wielded,
everywhere, waiting to capture some scene worthy of
selling to a tabloid or a FOX special or, perhaps even
better, worthy of handing over to the police for evidence.
Snitching is no longer an act one keeps secret or that is
reviled by the public (as in the old-fashioned notion of the
"stool pigeon" or "rat") but rather a mode of "heroism" to
be lauded on television. 
>From the way Pynchon describes the 1980s, these
developments would seem to be the logical continuation of
the larger trajectory he tracks from the 1960s. As David
Cowart puts it, Vineland [...]  

http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/burket24.htm