Such dreams as stuff is made on

[Mark Kohut]

I've read many fewer Burroughs than he's written --and that long ago; long before Pynchon immersion --but does he fit your bill? 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 9, 2018, at 12:54 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> One of Pynchon's master tropes is to personify -- ascribe *agency* to --
> resources and principles taken up by technology: coal and oil and calculus
> and control theory in GR, astronomy and cartography in M&D, electricity and
> aviation and silver halides in AtD, virtual "real estate" and its
> monetization in BE, usw.
> 
> His most-cited surfacing (and questioning!) of this is Enzian at the ruined
> -- so They say -- Jamf works in Hamburg (518-521), alternating between
> "Technologies" lusting for their funding and "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..."
> 
> Can you suggest other major authors/works that make strong thematic use of
> this trope? In which it's stated or hinted that the "stuff" involved in
> characters' drives and conflicts *wants* to be exploited, for ends that may
> not be ours?
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l