Well, Pynchon seems to have

[alice wellintown]

A good reading of that good Luddite phrase. It's irony seems to have flown
right over Monte's head.


On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 3:40 PM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Well said as usual...but I have always read the line about " artificial
> intelligence, molecular biology and robotics ( as) something for all good
> Luddites to look forward to"...as a statement  that THOSE things will be
> more things Luddites will be resisting ( if they have the will)...
>
> My best differing perspective resides in my short post about the whole (
> possible) scientific age of modernity which Pynchon savages a lot......and
> he goes deep enough to indict (with Empsonian ambiguity and a complex view
> of we human beings' role) ways even the scientific method contributed to
> that modern world view, in my opinion.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jun 4, 2013, at 11:49 AM, "Monte Davis" <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> No, we don’t disagree. Of course Pynchon does ask very uncomfortable
> questions about what we make of our technologies and vice versa. He does
> show us people who impose on others, and embrace for themselves, a variety
> of dehumanizations. But I don’t see him reifying or ascribing agency to
> science and technology; in fact,  when he seems to do so, it’s almost
> always a parodic setup to prove that in fact the agency remains with us:**
> **
>
> ** **
>
> It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all
> theatre, all just to keep the people distracted . . . secretly, it was
> being dictated instead by the needs of technology… I need my night’s blood,
> my funding, funding, ahh more, more…****
>
>             …Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument has
> been iterated, dogged and humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the
> younger Schwarzkommando especially), “All very well to talk about having a
> monster by the tail, but do you think we’d’ve had the Rocket if someone,
> some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn’t *wanted* to chuck a
> ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go ahead,
> capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it’ll make you feel less
> responsible—but it puts you in with the neutered, brother…”****
>
> ** **
>
> As for the Luddite essay: NB that the title is a question, not an
> exhortation (“Join me at the barricades, my fellow Luddites!”) -- a hint,
> perhaps, that he doesn’t have a pat answer? NB how he emphasizes  that the
> historical incidents labeled “Luddite” were  in fact good old “open-eyed
> class war,” directed **not** at a new technology but at machinery that
> had been around for 200 years. NB that he’s very explicitly ambivalent
> about whether information technology, the dominant or at least
> highest-profile technology of our own time, favors the Firm or the
> Counterforce (it yields Wikileaks and Twitter flash mobs as well as Total
> Information Awareness). NB that his projected convergence of “the curves of
> research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and
> robotics” is – surprise! -- not a coming Dark Age of techno-horror, but
> instead “certainly something for all good Luddites to look forward to.”***
> *
>
> ** **
>
> If people want to namecheck Pynchon as validator for a simplistic and
> ill-informed anxiety about Science and Technology as cosmic forces somehow
> independent of people with genitals, neuroses, politics, and ideologies, I
> can’t stop ‘em: a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
> Me, I like him for his complex and well-informed anxiety – **and**
> fascinated attraction, **and** wonder, and all his other responses to
> science and technology. ****
>
> ** **
>
> * *
>
> * *
>
> *From:* owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org<owner-pynchon-l at waste.org>]
> *On Behalf Of *Markekohut
> *Sent:* Monday, June 03, 2013 6:15 PM
> *To:* Monte Davis
> *Cc:* pynchon -l
> *Subject:* Re: Well, Pynchon seems to have****
>
> ** **
>
> We don't disagree, I think.....complex he is fer sure....one reason I do
> read and reread...****
>
> ** **
>
> But I did write " some anti-technology and anti-science stuff".......key
> qualifier for me here****
>
> Is " some"......part of that complexity.****
>
> ** **
>
> Once again, few of his contemporary writers of fiction, near peers,
> alluded to Ludditism****
>
> Favorably in a non-fiction piece, his own opinion,and I have pointed to
> some perspectives****
>
> On math and science in Against the Day this last still-unfinished read.....
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> You're one of the best defenders of science on this list and really
> illumine Parts where P****
>
> Shows his aware-love......****
>
> ** **
>
> But the other side exists too, I aver.  ****
>
>  ****
>
>
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