IVIV (1) There Will be Computers for This

[Joseph Tracy]

I agree with alice here as much as I understand her reasoning. The  
problem with the mechanized looms is much the same as the problems  
with computers. The way they function in the economy  is not  
primarily to democratize work but to reinforce the owner/ worker  
class split. and to replace individual skill and respect for quality  
with corporatized mass production. This has to do not with the tools  
themselves , but with whether the design models of those tools that  
become dominant fit within acceptable power arrangements. I don't see  
the reviewer's notion that  Pynchon is suggesting  "that 'perhaps' it  
all went in the right direction...". I do see Pynchon suggesting that  
it isn't a case of good guys and bad guys but interdependent buyers  
and sellers .  L.A. was selling a certain picture of the future and   
the buyers got what they paid for:  Gilligan's Island, a future  
without a future, endless suburban expansion, software that promotes  
as much surveillance and automated violence as  fast free exchange of  
information and ideas.

  As I read the book, the slim Hope on offer lies not on the victory  
of one side or the other( cops/heads, Fangers/lefty investigators,  
quality/predatory developers) but a kind of new ground of being  
(Lemuria), a holistic way of thinking that is suggested in altruism,  
karma, friendship,  balanced contentment, a respect for cultural and  
biological diversity..  Not perhaps political rallying points but  
realities that continue to manifest an alternative beauty to  
agonistic myth.  This strain which appears throughout P's fiction can  
be interpreted as fictive self delusion but that interpretation does  
not ring true to me. I think MLK was offering the ultimate in  
pragmatic realism when he said “We must learn to live together as  
brothers or perish together as fools.”

The 20/20 hindsight the reviewer talks about is not all hindsight by  
any means. The 70s saw plenty of accurate predictions and warnings  
regarding technology,  energy, politics , ecological dangers, social  
directions.  Unfortunately accuracy rarely leads to a greater voice  
in  public debate or political choices. Even MLK who has been  
heroized has simultaneously been stripped of his core message.

I am reading The Life and Times of I.F. Stone now, still in the FDR  
years and am amazed how much the groups and rhetoric have remained  
the same.  An impression that tends more to confirm my own thinking  
is that  the weakness of the movements for economic justice and human  
rights does not lie in their inability to persuade , but the ease  
with which they are locked out of the debate, and the degree to which  
they compromise themselves ethically by not exercising the self  
criticism which they promote.

Even more amazing to me is the degree to which the power, popularity  
and influence of fascism in America has been blocked from our history  
books . Not that it was done, but how little I realized, despite my  
contrarian reading habits the degree to which it was done.
This revisionist history is often front and center in our public  
debate, which isn't really public because even public media is now  
commercialized.


On Sep 16, 2009, at 6:38 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

> Yes, anyone can gather data. In fact, the data may be collected by a
> clerk with a  computer. The clerk can even use the computer to
> interpret the data. Moreover, the clek can make decisions based on the
> interpretaion of data. It matters little if the clerk is smart or
> dumb. As long as the clerk can push the right buttons and read the
> data and then push the right buttons,  and of course, the clerk must
> work below the prevailing rate, that is, the clerk must be cheap
> labor. The machine is never smart. It's a machine. Computers don't
> have intelligence. Or life. They can no more be infected with viruses
> than TV sets or clocks or fire-drills or hammers or nails. Pynchon is
> not quite a luddite. In fact, he mocks them as he does all other
> conspiracy theorists. Although the influence of Freud and Mumford,
> true Luddites, is huge (GR), Pynchon is closer to McLuhan. Not so easy
> to hanfg a sign on.
>
>
> Who makes the computer? Clerks. Who writes the programs that make the
> comptuter a powerful tool in the hands of the clerk?
>
> The Bill Gates & Co. guys. These are the guys that fucked us up. They
> sold us their world. Now we have to live in it. BUt it was designed
> not for us but for Them.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:48 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>> If Reet has "natural talent," it is not assembling data (something
>> easily done by a stupid clerk or machine), but interpreting it.
>> Access to the information is worth money, but if it's already public,
>> the drudgery of assembling it is a godsend, and does "democratize"  
>> it,
>> in that it can be done without hours of one's time.  I think Pynchon
>> has finally gone beyond his luddite fear of the internet expressed in
>> his intro to Stone Junction.  I mean, really, why was Iran so afraid
>> of Twitter during the last election fallout?  Guns won in the end, at
>> least that time around, but the dust won't settle there any time  
>> soon.
>>
>> http://www.themodernword.com/Pynchon/pynchon_essays_stone.html
>>
>> "The other day in the street I heard a policeman in a police car,
>> requesting over his loudspeaker that a civilian car blocking his way
>> move aside and let him past, all the while addressing the drive of  
>> the
>> car personally, by name. I was amazed at this, though people I tried
>> to share it with only shrugged, assuming that of course the driver's
>> name (along with height, weight and date of birth) had been obtained
>> from the Motor Vehicle Department via satellite, as soon as the
>> offending car's license number had been tapped into the terminal  
>> -- so
>> what?"
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 3:27 PM, alice wellintown
>> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The prophesy is not the point. The point is that Reet's great  
>>> knowledge and skill will be replaced by a machine. Of course,  
>>> even if one lacked Reets natural talent, one could go to public  
>>> libraries and public offices to read about the land and even  
>>> about many of the disputes, the projects and how they impacted  
>>> the water flow, the flow of wealth, and so on. But the Computer  
>>> makes this more readily available to more people.  This  
>>> democratic flattening of the world by the computer also  
>>> compromises privacy and democracy. It interesting that Pynchon,  
>>> whose name was changed from Pyncheon (Hawthorne also changed the  
>>> spelling of his name) of the House of the Seven Gables, is so  
>>> fascinated by the family disputes over lines and property rights  
>>> and the like.
>>>
>>> Ahab (Book of Kings), the model for Pyncheon (HSG) and Melville's
>>> Captain (M-D), as well as Shakespeare's Macbeth and Ibsen's Torvald
>>> (Doll's House), is the source .... Those evil Real Estate bald  
>>> headed
>>> villain in Scooby Doo must be sniffed out by the young people, who,
>>> although they plan and strategies, use science and research,  need a
>>> Beat/Hippie and his Dog to, serendipitously stumble onto the case
>>> breaking clues. So Reet may be a prophet with a super-duper ear to
>>> ground, but only Larry can fall asleep on the roof.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 3:37 PM, David Morris  
>>> <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> It's been said before, but, rilly, what is the point of this
>>>> "prophesy?"  REET senses the future, and it's computers?
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:06 PM, Dave Monroe  
>>>> <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> "'Someday,' she prophesied, there will be computers for this ...'"
>>>>> (IV, Ch. 1, pp. 6-7)
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>