BE -- "death wish for the planet" why the internet?

[ish mailian]

So Pynchon is stuck in the seventies. Just playing that same old cold
war tune, Gravity's Rainbow, with family in NYC with a 9-11 attack
tossed in? I don't think so. Ernie may be stuck in the seventies but
not the author. Nothing has changed? Ernie may have taught history but
he stopped reading it after 1989.

On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 4:37 PM, Thomas Eckhardt
<thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>> Why is Pychon using Ernie, a kind of prophet of the market to draw
>> attention to a death wish contained in the internet? Why the internet
>> in particular?
>
>
> As I stated before, I believe the main political theme of the novel is the
> continuity of cold war structures after 1989. Ernie's statement is highly
> relevant in that context ("(...) and don't think anything has changed,
> kid.").
>
> As you wrote in an earlier post, "This question about a collective
> death-wish for the planet runs like a cold shiver through all Pynchon’s
> writings."
>
> Why the internet?
>
> First, the facts as far as I can sift the wheat from the chaff:
>
> Ernie's statement that Arpanet was an element of
> Continuity-of-Government-planning after a nuclear attack is controversial.
> Sez Ernie:
>
> "Your Internet, back then the Defense Department called it DARPAnet, the
> real original purpose was to assure U.S. command and control after a nuclear
> exchange with the Soviets." BE, 419
>
> This is from a randomly chosen website:
>
> "It was not, however, created as part of any command and control system. Nor
> was the notion of surviving a nuclear attack a consideration according to
> statements from those who were in charge at the time (...)"
>
> http://www.alphr.com/features/369490/top-ten-internet-history-myths
>
> The RAND Corporation, however, referenced on p. 419 of BE, supports Ernie on
> this:
>
> 'US authorities considered ways to communicate in the aftermath of a nuclear
> attack. How could any sort of "command and control network" survive? Paul
> Baran, a researcher at RAND, offered a solution: design a more robust
> communications network using "redundancy" and "digital" technology.'
>
> http://www.rand.org/about/history/baran.html
>
> Ernie, in what I believe is a conscious reference to JFK's speech on P's
> part (I had not thought Kennedy was much different from other US Presidents
> until I read James Douglass' brilliant "JFK and the Unspeakable", the
> "unspeakable" referring to nuclear Armageddon), takes the relation to COG
> planning for granted. The rhetorical flourish of the "bitter-cold death wish
> for the planet" may be interpreted psychologically or spiritually but I
> prefer to see it as P's trademark technological Gothic. The internet is
> being anthropomorphized -- "It was conceived in sin, the worst possible." --
> a child out of a horror movie.
>
> The real meaning of this develops in the course of the conversation between
> Maxine and Ernie. It starts with Maxine's observation "Maybe TV back then
> was brainwashing, but it could never happen today. Nobody's in control of
> the internet." BE, 419.
>
> If there is any satire here, and I believe there is, it is surely directed
> against Maxine. Just listen to her:
>
> "And look how it's empowering all these billions of people, the promise, the
> freedom." BE, 420
>
> Understandably Ernie gets a little annoyed:
>
> "Call it freedom, it's based on control. Everybody connected together,
> impossible anybody should get lost, ever again. Take the next step, connect
> it to these cell phones, you've got a total web of surveillance,
> inescapable. (...) What they dream about at the Pentagon, worldwide martial
> law." BE, 420
>
> Neither P nor Ernie are obliged to present a coherent argument. If I try to
> make sense of Ernie's various points, it would go something like this (see
> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19871.htm for further
> background information): We remember that VL on the political level was also
> concerned with COG planning and martial law in the US. The internet now
> makes total surveillance possible, and thus brings fascism ever closer to
> our doorsteps -- put bluntly: total surveillance makes it possible to pick
> out the dissenters and card them off to the camps (REX 84 made it clear that
> this is not a conspiracy fantasy). Fascism also brings us closer to nuclear
> Armageddon because the people in charge then may just be MAD enough to think
> it is in their interest to finally initiate the nuclear first strike against
> Russia that the Joint Chiefs of Staff planned for at the beginning of the
> 60s -- when JFK openly opposed them.
>
> -
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