In the middle of a dream...

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

    ...most notably that the Internet, a developement 
     that promises social control on a scale those quaint
    old twentieth-century tyrants with their goofy
    mustaches could only dream about. (xvi)

I've been thinking (surprise, surprise) about the above, and have
decided to allow a positive connotation for "social control" into
my reading of The Foreword. After all, there are many aspects of
social control which play a positve role in the liberation of each
individual. Toilet training, to name an obvious example, is an essential 
skill for the free person and smacks of social control. Learning
how to translate one's needs into language understandable by
others requires social contol, and, is another example of how that
enhances rather than limits personal freedom.

These "small scale" examples of the liberating aspects of social
control are, of course, processes which have been, despite the
growth of the day-care industry, primarily associated with the
family unit- the natural habitat of big brothers and sisters.

Traditonally, individuals have learned morality, self-sacrifice for
group benifit and the importance of cleanliness in the family
setting. It has been the family unit which has defined the
parameters of freedom by the exertion of social control on
its members. What have been the effects of the "new media"
on that traditional family function?

If we consider Pynchon to have consciously placed himself along
the continuum defined by the Orwellian vector, what is the area
under the curve w/r/t the impact of the media- old and new- on
the family?

>From the dead eye of Oedipa's tv, through the late, late, LATE
show of the Watt's essay, to and including the user-friendly
computer system in Vineland, a process of engulfment and
domestication can be discerned. The media has gone from the
the snarling telescreen of 1984 to becoming a part of the family.

Prairie, who sort of personifies the "new media," and the hopes 
for liberation therein, as well as its relationship to the "old media," 
sort of personified by Frenesi- is also she who will be most
affected by this newest family member. This is another example,
I think, of the self-reflexive nature of media in general, not to
mention life-forms.

respectfully