NN Re: Internet and social control WAS Re: still no other topic but Doug?

[pynchonoid]

I'm taking side bets on what comes next. I figure fq,
Keith, Terrance, then Mackin. (It looks like Otto is
staying out of this one, since he seems to find
Pynchon's insight re this issue to be reasonable.)
None of them will address Pynchon's statement about
the Internet and social control, but will instead
offer up more personal insults. (I guess they don't
have anything to say about Pynchon or Nabokov.)

--- pynchonoid <pynchonoid at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The topic is, and has been, Pynchon's statement
> about
> the Internet and social control:
> 
> [...] What has steadily, insidiously improved since
> then, of course, making humanist arguments almost
> irrelevant, is the technology. We must not be too
> distracted by the clunkiness of the means of
> surveillance current in Winston Smith's era. In
> "our"
> 1984, after all, the integrated circuit chip was
> less
> than a decade old, and almost embarrassingly
> primitive
> next to the wonders of computer technology circa
> 2003,
> most notably the internet, a development that
> promises
> social control on a scale those quaint old
> 20th-century tyrants with their goofy moustaches
> could
> only dream about. [...] 
> -Thomas Pynchon, Foreword to _1984_
> 
> Unable to offer any credible reasons to accept his
> statement that Pynchon is a crank,  in the face of a
> discussion that ably demonstrated that there are
> good
> reasons to believe that Pynchon's insight is a good
> one,  Mackin chooses ad hominem attack instead. 
> It's
> too bad, really, but understandable:   Given the
> fact
> that the US and other governments in fact are using
> the Internet in ways that would make an old-time
> dictator jealous -- if only because of the
> convenience
> factor of electronic communications and digital
> archives, goodness knows those old mustachioed
> monsters managed to create a climate of fear just
> fine
> without the Internet -- and that corporations are
> using the Internet to control people in ways they
> don't often consciously recognze, it's difficult to
> know what sort of plausible argument could be
> offered
> to prove Pynchon wrong.  Hence Mackin's need for
> personal insult, I guess.  Pynchon's point remains
> valid nonetheless.
> 
> Please continue to write about me, Paul, don't let
> me
> cramp your style; I think it's pretty clear you
> don't
> have much else to say here.
> 
> 
> > On Fri, 2003-06-27 at 15:00, pynchonoid wrote:
> > > You can take responsibility for what you write
> > here,
> > > can't you?
> > > 
> > > --- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > It would be as easy as one, two, three . . .
> > > 
> > > Make that "one" . . . 
> > > 
> > > 1.  Mackin stops writing posts about Doug


=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.org/>

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