IVIV (12): 195-197

[Robin Landseadel]

On Nov 1, 2009, at 5:37 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> I did fine in Algebra  and personally think most technology is  
> neutral. But I cannot read my own ideas into Pynchon. Mark is giving  
> many examples, all  of which come to mind rather easily to anyone  
> who has read through Pynchon's work.  I do not think this advances  
> an argument for scientific ignorance, but a skepticism about  
> engineering a better world through engineering. The assertions you  
> and John are making about Pynchon's ambivalence to technology lack  
> examples and textual reasoning.
> I don't think it's a matter of  Pynchon ascribing agency to the  
> technology but to the mindset that fails to  account  either for the  
> negative effects of technology  or for what is frequently the  
> essential and inherent violence of technology.

I think Pynchon points to the way technology is applied more than to  
anything inherently evil in technological advancement. He gets  
explicit in "Is it O. K. to be a Luddite?"

	. . .it's important to remember that the target even of the original
	assault of l779, like many machines of the Industrial Revolution,
	was not a new piece of technology. The stocking-frame had
	been around since 1589, when, according to the folklore, it was
	invented by the Rev. William Lee, out of pure meanness.
	Seems that Lee was in love with a young woman who was
	more interested in her knitting than in him. He'd show up at her
	place. "Sorry, Rev, got some knitting." "What, again?" After a
	while, unable to deal with this kind of rejection, Lee, not, like
	Ned Lud, in any fit of insane rage, but let's imagine logically and
	coolly, vowed to invent a machine that would make the hand-
	knitting of hosiery obsolete, and so he did. According to the
	encyclopedia, the jilted cleric's frame "was so perfect in its
	conception that it continued to be the only mechanical means of
	knitting for hundreds of years."

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  Now, given that kind of time span, it's just not easy to think of
	Ned Lud as a technophobic crazy. No doubt what people
	admired and mythologized him for was the vigor and single-
	mindedness of his assault. But the words "fit of insane rage" are
	third-hand and at least 68 years after the event. And Ned Lud's
	anger was not directed at the machines, not exactly. I like to
	think of it more as the controlled, martial-arts type anger of the
	dedicated Badass.

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  There is a long folk history of this figure, the Badass. He is
	usually male, and while sometimes earning the quizzical
	tolerance of women, is almost universally admired by men for
	two basic virtues: he Is Bad, and he is Big. Bad meaning not
	morally evil, necessarily, more like able to work mischief on a
	large scale. What is important here is the amplifying of scale,
	the multiplication of effect.

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  The knitting machines which provoked the first Luddite
	disturbances had been putting people out of work for well over
	two centuries. Everybody saw this happening -- it became part
	of daily life. They also saw the machines coming more and
	more to be the property of men who did not work, only owned
	and hired. It took no German philosopher, then or later, to point
	out what this did, had been doing, to wages and jobs. Public
	feeling about the machines could never have been simple
	unreasoning horror, but likely something more complex: the
	love/hate that grows up between humans and machinery --
	especially when it's been around for a while -- not to mention
	serious resentment toward at least two multiplications of effect
	that were seen as unfair and threatening. One was the
	concentration of capital that each machine represented, and the
	other was the ability of each machine to put a certain number of
	humans out of work -- to be "worth" that many human souls.
	What gave King Ludd his special Bad charisma, took him from
	local hero to nationwide public enemy, was that he went up
	against these amplified, multiplied, more than human
	opponents and prevailed. When times are hard, and we feel at
	the mercy of forces many times more powerful, don't we, in
	seeking some equalizer, turn, if only in imagination, in wish, to
	the Badass -- the djinn, the golem, the hulk, the superhero --
	who will resist what otherwise would overwhelm us? Of course,
	the real or secular frame-bashing was still being done by
	everyday folks, trade unionists ahead of their time, using the
	night, and their own solidarity and discipline, to achieve their
	multiplications of effect. . .

http://www.themodernword.com/Pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html