IVIV (12): 195-197

[Joseph Tracy]

On Nov 4, 2009, at 7:16 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

>> I hope we can all agree on this, at least in literal terms. But even
>> recognising that there is no 'IT' to technology - that it isn't some
>> conscious force which is out to destroy us - that recognition doesn't
>> necessarily preclude an occasional shiver of dread that our logical,
>> rational view of technology as not having agency might be horribly
>> wrong. A bit like being 'afraid of the dark', even though 'the dark'
>> is, in itself, neutral.
>
> That technology is neutral seems obvious, but, again, that's not what
> those P-texts say. You needn't belive in the spirit of machines,
> magic, I sure don't, and who knows what the author believes, and I
> don't care, but the texts, the texts, they believe. To read the works,
> you have to believe or suspend disbelief. The reader has to accept
> that he is that fellow at the start of GR who is, preterite, and will
> not be saved.
>
> But what do I know.

First, that technology is neutral does not seem at all obvious to me  
and it does not appear to be Pynchon's sentiment.  Part of the  
problem is that once you build certain things. Dam rivers, build  
atomic weapons, trains, autos,  for example, you make changes that  
can't be reversed and create a dependence on a technology by which  
the technology has a greater transformative agency than the people.  
The cost benefit analysis is done by the people who will benefit  
most, but even discounting the millions who suffer, "they " too are  
addicted and vulnerable to the consequences of technology in ways no  
one including themselves can predict. Pynchon personifies this  
process in the Vormance expedition's excavation of the northern  
giant. With technology one has the illusion of control until one is  
drowning, burning, or falling. The giant appears to be neutral ,  
inert, dead until they dig it up and bring it home.

The way Pynchon  gives living agency to forces beyond the neutrality  
of logic is by reifying a spiritual dimension to the world. He treats  
that spiritual/mythic/intuitive as coexisting and intersecting with  
our physical/historical experience and where most authors favor a  
spiritual base of meaning, or a realist human base, or the narrative  
inner life of the individual as the center of meaning, Pynchon is  
democratically neutral. These dimensions coexist  and intersect  
without favoritism. Even things that are despicable are described  
with clinical neutrality.  The cold murderous insanity of Blicero is  
also tied up with raw lust and a mad poetic vision involving  
love,betrayal, self destruction and transcendence. "They" , on the  
other hand are calm  and in control, their hands firmly on the  
enduring controls of the technology that drives the market system.   
Blicero to them is like a piece of human technology projecting their  
power. Like the Vormance expedition they fail to see the long term  
consequences of that technology.

To see Them and their intimate connection to us seems to require a  
certain aloofness akin to but  in a  shocking funhouse mirror  
reflection of the aloof mindset of the marketeers and profitable  
elite. To see them and their connection to us requires a big picture  
vision that teases out and immerses the reader into the unflattering  
mirror of human lusts and fears that feed those criminal enterprises  
and ways of thinking and organizing, and gives them context,  
narrative dimension, faces and names. Where other writers want to  
throw out the inessential in favor of the narrative arc, here the  
trash is part of the picture, the brand names, the hundred stories  
that make up every story, but the ambition is both a holistic picture  
and a detailed and inclusive picture of the human condition  (albeit  
a hypertext picture with interactive parts and without definitive  
resolution).