IVIV (1) There Will be Computers for This

[Mark Kohut]

Whatever is true about TRP and his work in all of this comparative analysis, I stll see TRPs meaning mostly in his 1984 mindset: the computer can 'know' everything --and such knowledge can be used against us. Look at the bit about finding Shasta through it, anywhere she might be. 

As well, in IV, it is a another machine replacing the human, as you, alice, and others have said.  


--- On Fri, 9/18/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVIV (1) There Will be Computers for This
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, September 18, 2009, 6:48 AM
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 11:08 PM,
> Michael Bailey
> <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > alice wellintown wrote:
> >> I agree, however, while technology itself (the
> tools themselves) is
> >> neutral, the leverage of tools is increasing. That
> is, a tool, like a
> >> hammer or a sword is an extension of the human
> hand and affords the
> >> worker a flexibility that machine tools do not.
> Machines afford even
> >> less flexibility. Information machines even less.
> >
> > some tools you can pick up and carry, some you can't;
> you don't swing
> > a computer but you can't type on a hammer...
> 
> Depends on the definition of "tool". Using Mumford's &
> Marx's slightly
> different yet handy definitions, a hammer is a tool, and as
> I noted,
> an extension of the human hand. A modern computer or
> calculator, is an
> information machine. What is the impact on labor and the
> worker? This
> is the question we started with. My clain was that Aunt
> Reed will be
> replaced by a Machine--an automatic inflormation machine
> (i.e. HAL
> 2001).
> 
> Here is a little help for my argument:  (Again, while
> Freud, Marx,
> Mumford, other true Luddites have a profound influence on
> Pynchon
> texts, I don't read P as a true Luddite, but closer to
> McLuhan and
> Postman).
> 
> How is a machine distinguished from a tool? For Mumford,
> the essential
> distinction between a machine and a tool lies in the degree
> of
> independence in the operation from the skill and motive
> power of the
> operator.
> 
> But is the difference simply in the source of motive power?
> Although
> he notes that tools can be distinguised from machines on
> the basis of
> their motor forces, this is not the important element for
> Marx.
> 
> He describes the transformation of the instruments of labor
> from tools
> into machines as the removal of the instruments of labor
> from the
> hands of the worker. (alienation) The machine takes the
> place of the
> worker, not of the tool. "The machine ... is a mechanism
> that, after
> being set in motion, performs with its tools the same
> operations as
> the worker formerly did with similar tools." (Capital, Vol
> 1, NY,
> Intl. Pub. pp 374-79, Chapt 15 pp 492-).
> 
>  Marx also distinguishes the social organization of machine
> from that
> of tool-users, primarily in its need for a reliable
> organization of
> knowledge.
> 
> http://christianhubert.com/writings/machine.html
>