IVIV Aunt Reet

[Tore Rye Andersen]

You're of course absolutely right that the computer industry was 
already hopping in the late 60s and early 70s, and the prophecy
made by Semyavin may to some extent be an obvious one, at least to
those placed at the center of things. But the claim that "Someday 
it'll all be done by machine. Information machines" is still speaking
of something that hadn't happened yet back in 1973, even though the
arrows may certainly have pointed that way; whereas Aunt Reet's 
fake prophecy speaks of something that has already happened.
 
Pynchon sure likes his prophecies, BTW. In Lot 49, in Bortz's 
reconstruction of Tristero's history, we hear this:
 
"There might also be, say, a few visionaries: men above the immediacy
of their time who could think historically. At least one among them
hip enough to foresee the end of the Thirty Years's War [...]." (164)
 
Foretelling the future is HIP. Plenty of prophecies in GR as well,
including the Matrix-like prophecy you mention from the "Heart-to-Heart" 
dialogue. And Pynchon ends his Luddite-essay with yet another prophecy:
 
"If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out for will
come - you heard it here first - when the curves of research and 
development in artificial intelligence, molecular bioloy and robotics 
all converge. Oboy."
 
That would probably count as one of Pynchon's last 'genuine' prophecies.
Since then, he has been content to write about prophets (the introduction
to Orwell), and to have his characters make prophecies of our past or 
present.
 
Speaking of prophecies, the phrase "the wave of the future" is an old
favourite of Pynchon's, occuring several times in GR: Both in the Semyavin
quote (p. 258), in Jamf's lecture about silicon (580), and in a song about
Baby Bulbs (p. 648). A-and in IV it occurs at least four times: On pages
33, 195, 235 and 366.
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