Apocalypse Not! or What Pynchon got wrong: Bill Joy or Kill Joy?

[Fiona Shnapple]

If Maxine Is is more Henry Adams than a parody of Adams, it can be
argues that Pynchon's Luddite Vision was wrong. He simply got it
wrong. Well, he's in good company. And, as he sez in the 1984
Introduction, prophecy ain't exactly what writers do, it's what
readers make of what writers write. Maybe age and 9-11 and family
life....maybe reality, but something....makes this novel read like a
great gasp from a dinosaur, or a dragon whose bones were once planted
deep in the Earth, but now hang from wires in a museum around the
corner.


If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out for will
come -- you heard it here first -- when the curves of research and
development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics
all converge. Oboy. It will be amazing and unpredictable, and even the
biggest of brass, let us devoutly hope, are going to be caught
flat-footed. It is certainly something for all good Luddites to look
forward to if, God willing, we should live so long.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l