Chabon on BE

[Fiona Shnapple]

A Love Story

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.05/one_to_one.html

On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 7:26 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
> on the other hand, the nostalgia for a Garden, a Utopian deep space
> web, where one can venture invisible to the records of history is a
> dream of the Deathkingdom, the trip to the lifeless Moon.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 7:00 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
>> to my reading DA is, on the one hand, the Holy Grail of Geeks, a
>> Return to what might have been if only, that Subjunctive Space that
>> Pynchon has been hinting at, the Online Wedge (M&D) that isn't
>> anyplace on the Map, a Deep Space, over the Arch, over the Rainbow and
>> into what Brien McHale calls a Zone. So it is not easy to define or
>> map, but we can say what it is not, or what it is a departure from,
>> and that is the Land of Ours, the Space we have made, a Wasteland
>> depthless, dimesnionless, bereft of all Mystery, bleached and blanched
>> bled of all uncertainty, a corpse of the body politic, a zombie of the
>> banksters, a Lefty turned Liberal than Right and Straight Lined all
>> the way to Conspiracy's corrupted theater waiting for Steve Jobs to
>> send a hammer through the Telescreen and set us all free from the PC
>> monopoly.    It's a joke. And if all spaces have been mapped, by
>> Banners, Beta, Big Data, the Cult of Jobs, the Games, the Mobile
>> Device, the Crowdsourcing, the Carpal Tunneling of Creepers and Ton
>> Pynchon Peepers, by Kickstarter Microfounders who who worship DARPA,
>> who long for a System that can have that much vacuum power, that can
>> erase, forever and ever, for those who get in, those early adopters,
>> those high risk takers, those Snarky Boys who fantasize of Hacker
>> Swartz encounters in Beta Testing Paradise. And nobody knows where
>> you've been or done or dreamed or felt. Total Delete! Ah, the power to
>> erase it all! To Reboot. Like a Gangster Gatsby or Scarface in Deep
>> Bit Space.
>>
>> Meanwhile back in the real world of  Winston Smith erasure, the double
>> think thought police dictionary project of information control and the
>> redacting of the lexicon is busy building new towers on the graves of
>> memory, it is real estate, not that fake estate, 4th, 5th estate, but
>> REO for meat packers and YOU, your Pynchon fanatics who spin your webs
>> of conspiracy theories from the pages of counterpunch.
>>
>> Montauk? A fishing town run over by yahoos and bankers. Oh the conspiracy.
>>
>> I guess we should take solace in the fact that P nails the Ice with
>> his sharpest pick, but Ice is fantasy. We, on the other hand, are meat
>> sitting in front of the screen dreaming of a banner free thought of
>> our own.
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 3:22 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Here's a (very) light article on people trying to create DeepArchers
>>> today - online communities that are technically in the dark web.
>>>
>>> "‘Wow, this is like the Internet in 1994"...
>>>
>>> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/10/thompson/
>>>
>>> On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 5:22 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I think DA is supposed to be internet Zone, anarchy, a place w/o rules or
>>>> rulers. Pynchon Paradise. What is it "for?"  Wrong question. What for do you
>>>> want to make it?
>>>>
>>>> David Morris
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Saturday, October 19, 2013, John Bailey wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Yeah, I'm a bit confused about DeepArcher too... as far as I can tell,
>>>>> it's a program lodged in the deep web, which as you say is basically
>>>>> the "place" where IP addresses aren't connected to DNS so won't show
>>>>> up on any search engine, and you need a direct link or knowledge of
>>>>> the specific IP address to access it.
>>>>>
>>>>> So that kind of makes sense - DeepArcher is a program with Second
>>>>> Life-like aspects that can't be accessed unless you have the key. And
>>>>> later on the security of the fortress is compromised, and then the
>>>>> gates are just thrown open and it basically leaves the Deep Web and is
>>>>> accessible from the surface.
>>>>>
>>>>> What I really don't get is what the *hell* the program is for. A
>>>>> Second Life that only a handful of people can get into? And do what?
>>>>> The descriptions of Maxine's early journeys around the place make it
>>>>> seem like a point-and-click adventure game with no mystery to it or
>>>>> reason to play further. Except it has stunning graphics, for the
>>>>> era...
>>>>>
>>>>> At first I thought it was a navigation system for travelling through
>>>>> the Deep Web but that doesn't really seem right, since it would
>>>>> basically be a search engine with graphical interface for finding the
>>>>> IP addresses of places that aren't meant to be findable. Which would
>>>>> be exactly the thing that would pose a threat to the entire meaning of
>>>>> the Deep Web, even if you could erase your footsteps the way DA
>>>>> promises.
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyway, maybe that's the point - that this supposedly subversive
>>>>> method of total anonymity itself provides the architecture for control
>>>>> and surveillance and some sweet home shopping.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 2:04 PM, Michael Bailey
>>>>> <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> >
>>>>> > On Oct 19, 2013 7:09 PM, "Monte Davis" <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> Chabon is careless there. Ernie's capsule history is not *historically*
>>>>> >> baseless: yes, DARPA did fund some of the IT research leading to TCP/IP
>>>>> >> and
>>>>> >> packet switching. And yes, the Cold War justification for that funding
>>>>> >> *was*
>>>>> >> to develop a network technology that could "work around" servers
>>>>> >> knocked
>>>>> >> out
>>>>> >> by enemy attack, so that government could keep communicating.
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >
>>>>> > One of my other favorite authors, John Crowley, in _The Translator_
>>>>> > made the female protagonist's dad a darpa dude and evoked those times
>>>>> > wonderfully.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > If we were gonna get crazy and do a non-p group read like we did a few
>>>>> > yrs
>>>>> > back - I guess I finally thought of the one I'd suggest (-:
>>>>> >
>>>>> > But getting back to BE, I sort of have a question about this deep web
>>>>> > where
>>>>> > Deep Archer resides - does that correspond to anything nonfictional?  I
>>>>> > mean
>>>>> > are we talking about using a browser to navigate to some bare IP address
>>>>> > known not to dns at all but only to the cognoscenti? Afaik there were
>>>>> > bbses,
>>>>> > ftp and gopher, and then all of a sudden there was yahoo and aol and
>>>>> > urls
>>>>> > but nowhere was there anything like deep archer which is sophisticated,
>>>>> > ambiguous - nothing like the games I'm aware of - plus it's more and
>>>>> > less
>>>>> > than a game, possibly even a place that responds to users' emotional and
>>>>> > spiritual states of mind and even a place where a person can be said to
>>>>> > reside while accessing it.  Maybe a mmorpg or a Second Life type
>>>>> > environment?
>>>>> >
>>>>> > A development of the angelic realms alluded to at the beginning of
>>>>> > Vineland
>>>>> > and the amazing things computers - the ideal readers with the ideal
>>>>> > insomnia
>>>>> > - can do with mere 1s and 0s by stringing enough of them together.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Also on a different note a compare/contrast between Maxine and March,
>>>>> > Maxine
>>>>> > having the annointing (though somewhat revoked) to do a little something
>>>>> > about fraud while March is more a John the Baptist voice in the
>>>>> > wilderness -
>>>>> > strictly speaking there's no real need to say they represent stances
>>>>> > that an
>>>>> > author could take in depicting a social scene, but if a choice like that
>>>>> > is
>>>>> > evident in BE, it seems to me Pynchon - whose Sistine Chapel, Gravity's
>>>>> > Rainbow, could be described as more March-like - is aiming more at a
>>>>> > Mona
>>>>> > Lisa effect in bringing Maxine to the fore.
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l