Technology: making humanist arguments almost irrelevant

[alice wellintown]

ooops, there is irony: "the wonders of computer technology circa 2003," but
you get this. Don't you? Since it is followed by a scathing attack on the
use of technology for social control, it's not too hard to get.


On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 4:55 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com>wrote:

> How, Monte, do you square this passage from Pynchon's Foreword to 1984,
> published about 10 years ago, with the reading that you posted? In the
> Luddite essay, published around 1984, P argues the same. But the irony
> fooled you. But here, there is no irony. Re-read the Luddite essay. Pay
> close attention to the tone. That is, Pynchon's attitude. He is not an
> apologist for technology. He is not advocating balance. Cowart, one of the
> best readers of Pynchon, is simply wrong about this. Isn't he?
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 4:48 PM, alice wellintown <
> alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What has steadily, insidiously improved since then, of course, making
>> humanist arguments almost irrelevant, is the technology. We must not be too
>> distracted by the clunkiness of the means of surveillance current in
>> Winston Smith's era. In "our" 1984, after all, the integrated circuit chip
>> was less than a decade old, and almost embarrassingly primitive next to the
>> wonders of computer technology circa 2003, most notably the internet, a
>> development that promises social control on a scale those quaint old
>> 20th-century tyrants with their goofy moustaches could only dream about.
>> from the Foreword to 1984
>>
>
>
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