Internet & social control

[Malignd]

<<The Internet came into being, let us not forget,
first as ARPANET and then as DARPANET -- that is, as
the U.S. Government Department of Defense's array of
research communications links among its nuclear
missile sites. The very circuits that signalled the
Cold War's threats of annihilation now make up the
benign and gossipy information superhighway, just as
the colorful sign of God's promise to Man was
suspended on drops of moisture left over from the
Flood. >>

Not for the first time, Millison posts something which
contradicts the argument he belabors, wishing the
while there were facts to support it.  

In the above case, the writer (invoking Pynchon no
less) invokes the Internet's ability to expand and
morph beyond any and all uses envisioned for it at the
outset (A tool for control that can't be controlled.) 


Those initial proposed uses (also unwittingly
documented by Millison against his own argument) were
for the maintenance, during the time of the cold war,
of military communications after an attack, not for
the purpose of controlling the citizenry as he
bizarrely claims, in the face of much contrary
evidence and reason.  

His argument at bottom is built on two notions: (a)
that, since there was military involvement, it was
ipso facto sinister; and (b) Pynchon says so.  

Of course, even Pynchon, the shut-in technology seer
dumbfounded that police cars had internet access,
hasn't quite said what Millison, the "Pynchonoid,"
claims:  Pynchon's narrow take on the internet is
offered as a simplistic prediction; for Millison it's
a done deal.

(For further on this topic (for those not numbed),
another, somewhat more nuanced, take on the Internet
appears in Thomas Friedman's column on yesterday's NY
Times op ed page.)




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