TP or NP? Trial Balloon goes up

[Mark Kohut]

You may be right, of course, and I may be right (in that P felt what I wrote, but that might surely then be
my undermining of his genius under your truths below), but I'll offer this in refinement: 
 
TRP might, by AtD, (and earlier but I'm not arguing that), believe the risk inherent in working within, in using, technology in our 
modern world makes it all a......gamble? As we have just gone 'round on the plist guitar
making our prognosticians about how long and whether human beings would survive...
 
All the gambling stuff--more than just an extended 'casino capitalism" metaphor, maybe?....and those remarks in at least two
books about ...."coming out just under even" in life so far......and, of course into what, historically, do the Chums fly at the end?
is his "History is a step-function", a mathematical---got me on this one, at least,by my own use---restatement of ye olde cyclical theories
of history? History is condemned to repeat itself at ever higher levels of Risk? 
 
In the real world, we have the danger that climate change is or soon will be irreversible hence answering,
perhaps, the most general question about The Industrial Revolution; or still and always nuking ourselves
out of it all...
 
is that what he captures with The Trespassers? Something happened (in the near future) but we don't (yet) know what it is, Mr. Jones? 

From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
To: 'Mark Kohut' <markekohut at yahoo.com> 
Cc: 'pynchon -l' <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 6:00 PM
Subject: RE: TP or NP? Trial Balloon goes up


Mark Kohut sez:
 
Technology has made it easier for the System, for a few, for They (as representatives of Us, busy,
complacent, trying to live under history as a State of Seige).
 
I’m not at all sure about that: I’d argue that it’s harder to control a society today than it was for priest/kings in Mesopotamia and Egypt (the latter the longest-lasting System we know of). And one of the most fascinating aspects of the evolving Intercloud is that hacks and workarounds seem to proliferate even faster than governmental or corporate schemes for Total Information Awareness.
 
Agreed on the ambivalence of anarchism – as I wrote that I was thinking narrowly about Webb’s terrorism and the damage his, uhh, dedication does to his family, not to mention those train passengers who *aren’t* Vibe goons. But of course anarchism is deliberately multivalent throughout AtD, and there are places throughout Pynchon’s work where it’s identified with a return to prelapsarian bliss.
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