_1984_ Foreword: Pynchon & the Internet

[Michael Joseph]

thanks Michael. I enjoyed your essay. As I suspected, Pynchon's reticence
about the internet is not at all related to Lessig's, which, like
Gaskill's and Coursey's, comes more of a Libertarian position. Pynchon
writes about technology almost as though he's in physical pain, and given
his world famous proclivity for privacy, maybe he'd find the familiarity
and access at every level here really personally daunting and even
repellent. He may even feel that the internet is both a tool for and an
analog of the cultural construction of identity, for/of imposing norms and
values: social control emanating both from a fascist big brother and from
crypto-fascists who impose sameness through the mediation of a ubiguitous
communications' device. On the other hand, Lessig perceives a value in the
internet, a kind of sacred, he wants to protect (hence perhaps the tone of
his lament, the (free) internet is dying, reminiscent of T. Altizer and
the God is dead theology of the sixties). Reading about Lessig and the
internet is like reading recognition scenes or conversion scenes. I'm not
persuaded that Pynchon seems to have any such religious involvement with
the internet, which goes back to my original thought that the reference in
the Andrew Orlowski essay was a bit of padding.

Michael





On Sat, 17 May 2003, pynchonoid wrote:

> I'm assuming that Pynchon follows what's happening
> with the Internet from:  he wrote about computers and
> invasion of privacy in his intro to _Stone Junction_,
> made it a plot device in _Vineland_, mentions an array
> of computer technologies in the Luddite and Sloth
> essays, allusions in Mason & Dixon, etc. It's obvious
> that he's been paying attention to computers and the
> Internet for a long time, and while  hasn't said a lot
> about it, he's said enough to convince me (and not to
> boast but it's a fact I've been involved in
> technology business publishing for more than 20 years,
> <http://www.online-journalist.com>) he knows what he's
> talking about.
>
> [...] The other day in the street I heard a policeman
> in a police car, requesting over his loudspeaker that
> a civilian car blocking his way move aside and let him
> past, all the while addressing the drive of the car
> personally, by name. I was amazed at this, though
> people I tried to share it with only shrugged,
> assuming that of course the driver's name (along with
> height, weight and date of birth) had been obtained
> from the Motor Vehicle Department via satellite, as
> soon as the offending car's license number had been
> tapped into the terminal -- so what?
> Stone Junction was first published in 1989, toward the
> end of an era still innocent, in its way, of the
> cyberworld just ahead about to exponentially explode
> upon it. To be sure, there were already plenty of
> computers around then, but they were not quite so
> connected together as they were shortly to become.
> Data available these days to anybody were accessible
> then only to the Authorized, who didn't always know
> what they had or what to do with it. There was still
> room to wiggle -- the Web was primitive country,
> inhabited only by a few rugged pioneers, half loco and
> wise to the smallest details of their terrain. Honor
> prevailed, laws were unwritten, outlaws, as yet
> undefinable, were few. The question had only begun to
> arise of how to avoid, or, preferably, escape
> altogether, the threat, indeed promise, of control
> without mercy that lay in wait down the comely vistas
> of freedom that computer-folk were imagining then -- a
> question we are still asking. Where can you jump in
> the rig and head for any more -- who's out there to
> grant us asylum? If we stay put, what is left to us
> that is not in some way tainted, coopted, and
> colonized, by the forces of Control, usually digital
> in nature? Does anybody know the way to William
> Gibson's "Republic of Desire?" Would they tell if they
> knew? So forth.
> You will notice in Stone Junction, along with its
> gifts of prophecy, a consistent celebration of those
> areas of life that tend to remain cash-propelled and
> thus mostly beyond the reach of the digital. It may be
> nearly the only example of a consciously analog Novel.
> Writers since have been obliged to acknowledge and
> deal with the ubiquitous cyber-realities that come
> more and more to set, and at quite a finely chopped-up
> scale too, the terms of our lives, not to mention
> calling into question the very traditions of a single
> author and a story that proceeds one piece after
> another -- a situation Jim Dodge back then must have
> seen coming down the freeway, because the novel, ever
> contrarian, keeps its faith in the persistence of at
> least a niche market -- who knows, maybe even a deep
> human need -- for modalities of life whose value lies
> in their having resisted and gone the other was,
> against the digital storm -- that are likely,
> therefore, to include pursuits more honorable that
> otherwise.
> One popular method of resistance was always just to
> keep moving -- seeking, not a place to hide out,
> secure and fixed, but a state of dynamic ambiguity
> about where one might be any given moment, along the
> lines of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Modern
> digital machines, however, managed quickly enough to
> focus the blurred ellipsoid of human freedom even more
> narrowly than Planck's Constant allows.
> Equally difficult for those who might wish to proceed
> through life anonymously and without trace has been
> the continuing assault against the once-reliable
> refuge of the cash or non-plastic economy. There was a
> time not so long ago you could stroll down any major
> American avenue, collecting anonymous bank checks, get
> on some post office line, and send amounts in the
> range "hefty to whopping" anywhere, even overseas, no
> problem. Now it's down to $750 a pop, and shrinking.
> All to catch those Drug Dealers of course, nothing to
> do with the grim, simplex desire for more information,
> more control, lying at the heart of most exertions of
> power, whatever governmental or corporate (if that's a
> distinction you believe in).[...]
> <http://www.libyrinth.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_stone.html>
>
> [...] Perhaps the future of Sloth will lie in sinning
> against what now seems increasingly to define us --
> technology. Persisting in Luddite sorrow, despite
> technology's good intentions, there we'll sit with our
> heads in virtual reality, glumly refusing to be
> absorbed in its idle, disposable fantasies, even those
> about superheroes of Sloth back in Sloth's good old
> days, full of leisurely but lethal misadventures with
> the ruthless villains of the Acedia Squad.[...]
> <http://www.libyrinth.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_sloth.html>
>
> At 8:36 PM -0400 5/17/03, Michael Joseph wrote:
>
> >I suspect you see a vital marxist dynamic in
> >Pynchon's writing and I'd like to understand this
> better.
>
> A political profile does seem to emerge from his
> published writings and comments in which Pynchon
> condemns war, multinational corporations (especially
> war profiteers), Nixon, Reagan, Bush, fascismm
> instutionalized religion and other toxic authoritarian
> hierarchies, Earth Mother-rapers, -- I could go on.
> (Yes, fair and balanced, P also criticizes the failed
> 60's revolution.)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> =====
> <http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>
>
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