Atdtda22: [42.1i] Gas, 607

[kelber at mindspring.com]

"...the system expanded, net-wise ..."

The ATD gas-net seems to be the precursor to W.A.S.T.E., which is, of course, a precursor to the internet.  The fact that a soap opera-type show is being broadcast over the gas system shows that it's co-optable, not anarchistic.  One could imagine W.A.S.T.E. being co-opted (a Pepsi logo superimposed over the muted horn symbol)as the internet has been.  All of these sytems have such a tension between anti-authoritarianism and social control.

When I read COL49, it was the pre-internet age and W.A.S.T.E. seemed, well, totally cool.  I've wondered whether post-internet readers find it quite as subversive and enthralling.  Any younger folks care to comment?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>

>
>[607.13-14] The population who communicated by Gas, who indeed were
>unwilling to communicate in any other way appeared pretty substantial ...
>
>The obvious reference, perhaps, in COL49:
>
>For here were God knew how many citizens, deliberately choosing not to
>communicate by U.S. Mail. It was not an act of treason, nor possibly even of
>defiance. But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic,
>from its machinery. Whatever else was being denied them out of hate,
>indifference to the power of their vote, loopholes, simple ignorance, this
>withdrawal was their own, unpublicised, private. Since they could not have
>withdrawn into a vacuum (could they?), there had to exist the separate,
>silent, unsuspecting world.
>
>1974 Penguin ed, 94. And so to:
>
>[607.17-19] ... and the system expanded, net-wise as if destined soon to
>cover all Britain. For those blessed with youth, money and idle time it
>amounted to little more than a faddish embrace of the Latest Thing ...
>
>[607.21] ... the post office ...
>
>Cf. the reference above to "the Gas Office" [607.6]. If the Gas Office is a
>police department, the post office is, in the first instance, a public
>service: "the bureaucracy of bureaucracies. In 1914 its staff accounted for
>almost one third of all the men and women employed in the civil service."
>
>From: C.R Perry, The Victorian Post Office: The Growth of a Bureaucracy,
>Boydell Press, 1992, 3.
>
>On the role of the individual in a bureaucracy, cf. the introduction of "the
>real 'Inspector Sands'" on 445.
>
>The opening page or so has introduced one kind of imagined community based
>on national identity. The bureaucracy is another. The reference to COL49
>reminds us of resistance to state power.
>