IVIV (12): 195-197

[kelber at mindspring.com]

In Michael Moore's latest, Capitalism: A Love Story, he gently brings up the idea that there's nothing inherent to technology or work that makes it necessary to treat workers like garbage. It's master-slave, boss-worker, corporate board-work force that distorts the workplace.  Once could (only in theory of course!) imagine a work place where the workers owned the high tech-factory, set the work conditions, etc., where technology wouldn't be oppressing the worker.  Or one could imagine (less theoretical)the same factory where workers are coerced into long hours, in horrifying conditions, paid slave wages, etc.  I think Pynchon's against technology (and photography, and electricity) only when it's in the wrong hands (which it usually is).

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com>

>
><<
>Tore:
>
> In M&D, for instance, Mason rages against the bloody
>Mills (313) which steal the work from the proud British workers,
>whereas Dixon points out that Engines can sometimes also remove
>the need for slave labor (697).
>>>
>
>Yes, and sometimes the thing that makes a technology 'bad' is the same
>thing that makes it 'good. In fact it's often the irony of that
>contradiction which makes the matter so interesting. I think Pynchon
>is ambivalent about a lot of things. HIs work is full of dualities.
>And technology is just one of the more important ambivalences that run
>through his work.
>
>Lots of handy aide-memoires here:
>
>http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/technology.html
>
>Particularly:
>
>"But Technology, alas, braid-crowned and gold-thighed maiden, always
>comes up for grabs like this."
>
>
>> Tore:
>> Machines are bad, but sometimes they're not so bad.
>
>O-or, machines are good, but sometimes they're not so good. Well, no,
>that would be stretching it way too far. My own, utterly unscientific,
>memory-based impression of Pynchon's general attitude to technology,
>is that on the approval/distrust scale, his needle would balance out
>over on the distrust side. So, he's ambivalent, but erring on the side
>of caution.