Still Nabokov-free WAS Re: NN Gibson re Orwell

[Jasper Fidget]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of pynchonoid
> Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 8:50 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: RE: Still Nabokov-free WAS Re: NN Gibson re Orwell
> 
> Yes, Internet service delivery is complex, as is the
> infrastructure beneath.  That complexity hasn't,
> doesn't, and won't prevent governments and
> corporations from using the Internet for social
> control in various forms, however. 

I agree that governments and corporations do use the internet for their own
ends.  I've turned down projects in the past because of the kinds of data
they wanted me to help them collect and keep (I could tell you stories that
would make your head spin in that regard).  They weren't necessarily
dependant on the internet for that data though (companies and governments
used to mail data around on tapes -- and still do in some places -- or
before computers by way of portable filing cabinets).  Without the internet,
they still would have networks along which data would be passed for use and
collection, and there are plenty of private networks like this without any
connection to the internet (most of the US Government's networks for
instance).  

I mainly object to your (and I suppose P's) attack upon the "internet" as
*designed* to be a means of social control.  Information technology in
general has exponentially increased the ability of governments and
corporations to -- whatever, do what they do -- but not the internet per se,
and certainly not all of it.  Your scope is at once too large and too small.

"Decentralization",
> perhaps on a purely technical level, but, from its
> inception, a network that was designed to keep power
> in the hands of the government, 

You mean ARPAnet I assume.  The modern internet has little in common with
DARPA's original network concepts.  And the purpose was to maintain
communications in the event of a nuclear strike.  Shit, in that case I'd be
pretty happy if the government still had communications.  I'd want to nuke
the bastards back.  And it helped to maintain Mutually Assured Destruction,
thus the balance of power.

and, later as the
> Internet became commercialized, the corporations that
> implemented it.
>

Well you're obviously biased against corporations for some reason.

> It seems the Ministry of Truth has been quite
> successful in promulgating the myth of the
> cybercowboy, running wild and free on the information
> frontier, when in fact Internet traffic can be -- and
> is, in some cases -- monitored by any determined
> government.

True, there's Carnivore and its sisters, but there are many ways to the same
point, and not all pass through its salivating maw.  The "cybercowboy" knows
which way to steer his horse.  Did you think just anybody could rustle
cattle out there on the prairie?

> 
> See the book _Firebrands: Building Brand Loyalty in
> the Internet Age_ (by Michael Moon and Doug Millison,
> yes that's me) for a detailed road map that
> corporations follow to induce specific forms of
> customer behavior -- another important form of social
> control.
> 

Congratulations on your ISBN.

> Of course government and corporate control of the
> Internet is not yet absolute or complete, and may
> never achieve such, but the fact that people who want
> to keep their efforts secret have to take increasingly
> difficult and onerous measures in order to evade
> Internet security would seem to testify to the
> seriousness of the challenge. The proof's in the
> pudding.  Virtually every government currently uses
> the Internet to investigate or track all kinds of
> "criminal" or otherwise prohibited activities.  If
> that's not a form of social control, I don't know what
> you'd call it. 

I would call that law enforcement.

Corporate uses of the Internet are
> varied and disturbing, if you take the time to look
> into what sorts of information are being gathered and
> what uses they serve.
> 
> Gibson is typical of his contemporaries, caught up in
> the romance of the Internet, believing that something
> special about this particular technical achievement is
> somehow going to avoid being exploited by those in
> powr for their own advantage.  Pynchon knows better.
> 
> 

Gibson's point with the internet has always been that it allows information
sharing between people who otherwise would not be able to do so.  If
information is power, then information sharing is empowerment.

> 
> --- Jasper Fidget <jasper at hatguild.org> wrote:
> > This is terribly simplistic and inaccurate.  [...]
> 
> pynchonoid:
> > > You don't know what you're talking about it. Fact
> > is,
> > > the Internet is controlled by corporations, which
> > are
> > > licensed by governments to manage and implement
> > the
> > > various software and hardware systems that are the
> > > Internet.
> 
> 
> 
> =====
> <http://www.pynchonoid.org/>
> 
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
> http://sbc.yahoo.com