GR mod of Half-Life 2

[kelber at mindspring.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Bandwraith at aol.com
Sent: Jul 4, 2005 12:09 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org, pynchon-l at waste.org, pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: GR mod of Half-Life 2


Well, fonz, you might try emailing Negroponte:

    http://web.media.mit.edu/~nicholas/

He started and continues to run MIT's Media Lab.
Of course, If you just google "Negroponte" you're 
as likely to come across "John" Negroponte, Nick's 
brother-  a horse of an entirely different color:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte

Now John is more of an analog type guy than Nick- 
more pragmatic and down to earth- less prone 
to idealistic digital visions of the future- less playful. 
So, he might not be able to provide you with much 
inside info into any video games based on GR. On 
the other hand, he could certainly provide you, if he 
chose to, with all kinds of information about those 
"bumps in the road" on the way to peace in Bagdad, 
not to mention the hundreds of thousands of "bumps" 
in the roads, fields, countryside, etc., that he left behind 
in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua...

All right, I'm being a little nit-picking here, and I'll admit I should get a fucking life.  However:

Why do you equate digital electronics with idealism and anlog with militarism, imperialism, etc.?   We'll never know what could have been accomplished with analog electronics -- Bill Gates et al. saw to that -- not to mention all the other technologies which fell victim to rampant profit-making, such as non-obsolescent cars, enviro-friendly energy technologies, etc.  It doesn't make one a Luddite to bemoan the capitalist strangle-hold on technological development.  For all we know, analog technology could have created a way to model the effects of global warming so effective that even  Bush and Co. would have had to take notice.  And the US military seems pretty smitten with digital and its "smart-bomb" excesses.  So lighten up on poor old analog.