Still Nabokov-free WAS Re: NN Gibson re Orwell

[pynchonoid]

--- Jasper Fidget <jasper at hatguild.org> wrote:
> I agree that governments and corporations do use the
> internet for their own
> ends.  

Common ground.

>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).  

I could tell you stories, too.
  
> I mainly object to your (and I suppose P's) attack
> upon the "internet" as
> *designed* to be a means of social control. 

But that's part of the plan from the start.  See the
RAND reports I posted separately -- a decentralized
network that could withstand massive enemy attack and
continue to provide command and control
communications.


> You mean ARPAnet I assume. 

Yes, the Internet evolved directly from ARPAnet. 


>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.

That's right. 
 
> 
> I would call that law enforcement.

A form of social control. 

pynchonoid:
> >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.


fidget:
> 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.

That's a naive view, and one that Pynchon counters, in
his Stone Junction intro, Vineland, Foreword to
_1984_. 



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