Reading

[Michael Bailey]

Tore Rye Andersen writes:
> I certainly don't think so, but machines come in many guises, and the ICBMs of the Cold War
> have been replaced by other machines (e.g. the Tube which plays so prominent a part in Vineland,
> not to mention the machine you're all sitting in front of right now), and the immachination
> theme in GR also extends to such machines. Think of Father Rapier's sermon on p. 539 of GR:
> "Once the technical means of control have reached a certain size, a certain degree of being
> connected one to another, the chances of freedom are over for good."

as the anarchists (among others, probably) distinguish between "power
over" and "power to do"

so isn't there also a "freedom from" and "freedom to" [do something]?
and doesn't Pynchon cite in several places (the immured glass artisans
on the secret prison-isle near Murano come to mind) how within strait
constraint there can be incredible "freedom to"

a different point: "certain degree of being connected to each other"
conjures the chains of slavery mentioned in M&D and how they also bind
the slaveholder