IVIV computers, Internet, Aunt Reet & etc.

[Mark Kohut]

another controversial remark?..pushing for that wanted discussion.

Old Joe Conrad has a semi-famous bit of advice for a would-be writer:
"In the destructive element immerse".  

I have often thought of this when I reflect on two aspects, at least, of TRP as writer: SOME of his obviously self-immersive take on TV and such. Especially when we read such lines about cop shows as "forms of social control" [intro to 1984]

A--and, his neo-Luddite perspective on computers, the internet, etc. as expressed in some non-fiction.  

He lives in America and "lets it unfurl"---Lot49. So his work can get it right. 

--- On Sun, 8/30/09, Doug Millison <dougmillison at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Doug Millison <dougmillison at comcast.net>
> Subject: IVIV computers, Internet, Aunt Reet & etc.
> To: "János Székely" <miksaapja at gmail.com>, "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Sunday, August 30, 2009, 11:47 AM
> "The key ideas used in mainstream
> computers of the standard, von Neumann, serial architecture
> had largely been put forward by the md-1960s. Most of these
> "great ideas in computer design" were first explored with
> considerable government support. When the real explosion in
> commercial computer use took place in the early 1960s,
> advances based on purely commercial developments became more
> common." (13)
> 
> "It is important to observe that the early development of
> the U.S. semiconductor industry was driven by government
> funding, particularly by the military services. The original
> invention of the transistor at the civilian Bell labs built
> in part on the foundations laid by a large government
> program in semiconductor materials, used in detectors for
> radar, carried out during the war.…all of the early
> production of Western Electric, the Bell system's
> manufacturing affiliate, went to military shipments." (16)
> 
> "The forerunner of modern [computer] graphics was the
> display console attached to the MIT Whirlwind computer,
> built with Navy and Air Force funding in the early 1950s.
> The SAGE air defense system, the large-scale follow-up to
> that early experiment, further developed display technology
> and gave birth to the light pen, which allowed an operator
> to 'draw' electronically on a display tube. These concepts
> were extended with the development of the first digital
> drawing tablets, the Rand tablet, developed with support
> from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in the
> early 1960s; the invention of the mouse, a digital marker
> whose motion is matched on a graphics display, at the
> Stanford Research Institute (again with DARPA support) in
> the mid-1960s; and the refinement of the idea of interfacing
> with a computer through the manipulation of images on a
> graphics display, icons, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research
> Center in the 1970s." (24)
> 
> "More than half of IBM's total revenues from domestic
> electronic data processing (EDP) activities in the 1950s
> came from two large government programs: the analog
> "Bomb-Nav" guidance computer installed in the B-52 bomber
> and contracts for computers used in the SAGE program." (87)
> 
> "SAGE was essentially the first wide-area computer network,
> the first extensive digital data communications system, the
> first real-time transaction system.…Many of these concepts
> were consciously into the business world a few years later
> when IBM announced its Semiautomatic Business-Research
> Environment (SABRE) airlines reservation system. SABRE,
> fully operational by 1964, was the first commercial
> real-time transaction system.…Ironically, SAGE's main
> military objective -- protecting the United States against a
> Soviet bomber attack -- was irrelevant by the time the
> system was completed. In the early 1960s, the USSR was
> deploying its first intercontinental ballistic missiles, and
> the bomber threat became a second-order concern." (89-90)
> 
> …from a book worth reading:  Creating the
> Computer:  Government, Industry, and High Technology by
> Kenneth Flamm (1988. The Brookings Institution)
> preview online at:
> http://books.google.com/books?id=p6S9WOniQN4C&dq=Creating+the+Computer&source=gbs_navlinks_s
> 
> For a book I co-wrote, Silicon Road, published by Softbank
> in the early 1990s, about the pioneers of the PC industry, I
> had a chance to interview Doug Englebart, inventor of the
> mouse.   Quite a guy, with a clear
> understanding of the revolution his invention helped to
> usher in.
> 
> Terry Winograd, a Stanford researcher in artificial
> intelligence and robotics, is another key figure I had a
> chance to interview, for Computer Language magazine. 
> When I met with him, he was excited about Xerox PARC. 
> For the same magazine I interviewed Kemeny and Kurtz,
> developers of BASIC.
> 
> I always think of Pynchon's comments on charisma when I
> think about these early PC industry pioneers.  Steve
> Jobs is just a particularly well-known example, with his
> notorious "reality distortion field".  But I saw H.
> Ross Perot suck all the oxygen out of Jobs'  room, at
> the formal introduction of the Next computer - dozens of us
> reporters migrated from Jobs' end of the room to Perot's,
> such that Jobs wound up following along as we all listened
> to Perot preach about the way these desktop computers were
> going to change enterprise computing.
> 
> 
> On Aug 29, 2009, at 11:26 PM, János Székely wrote:
> 
> > 2009/8/30 Doug Millison <dougmillison at comcast.net>:
> >> "Someday there will be computers for all this"
> > 
> > A fake after-the-fact forecast quite similar to a fake
> prophecy
> > written down around 1970, projected back to 1945:
> > 
> > "Someday it'll all be done by machine. Information
> machines. You are
> > the wave of the future." (GR 258)
> > 
> > Note the mention of waves in IT context, also
> appearing in the
> > mysterious "Heart-to-Heart, Man-to-Man" episode
> (698-699). It is part
> > of Semyavin's lament about information becoming the
> only real medium
> > of exchange, supplanting drugs, sex and luxury items
> (dope notably in
> > the first place).
> > 
> > 
> > I think the switch from dope subculture to IT with all
> its
> > consequences is a key background story in IV.
> > 
> > János
> 
> 
>