BE chapter 7 summary

[Neal Fultz]

Thanks!

Lots of tech / hacker references I'll mention:

* Justin and Lucas both did CS at Stanford
    * like Larry & Serge (Google)
    * "Marginal Hacks" is in the new hacker dictionary / jargon file -
http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/m/MarginalHacks.html

* Beanie Babies mentioned again, outside of flashbacks
    * The BB bubble had crashed around 99, so they're not worth
anything in the books' present. I had an outlaw horror comic book
called "When Beanies Attack."

* Anime references - Anime got really big in the 90s, first through
VHS for older comics / sci fi fans (Akira, Ghost in the Shell) and
then exploded with younger audiences (sailor moon, dbz, pokemon). In
2007, the import market collapsed, mirroring the other market
collapses that are mentioned (dotcom, beanie baby, financial markets).

* Dragonball Z - Zarbon is a deep pull, third tier villain to make
Pynchon's list. He appeared in the Frieza Saga, which was syndicated
in the US and cancelled mid-season, until it was picked up by Cartoon
Network for Toonami. The same thing happened with Sailor Moon. The
online fan petitions were major factors in getting the shows
restarted.

* "Came of Age into VRML" - Virtual Reality Markup Language was an
attempt to embed 3D graphics into web pages, only supported by
Netscape 2.0 as far as I remember. It was pronounced "vermal."  VR in
general was pretty much dead when BE was released, but Oculus has
popularized it again.

 * Sand hill soap box derby was a real thing -
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Soapbox-derby-crashes-with-tech-economy-2773043.php

* Fernet was also a thing in the Bay Area, I always preferred Jaeger
myself - https://www.thrillist.com/culture/why-san-francisco-drinks-more-fernet-than-anyone-in-america
- missing a drunkpynchon.com page

* "Network Effects" - This was popularized by "economics of
information" profs in the 90s, notably Hal Varian of UC Berkeley, who
became the Chief Economist of Google. Very popular among VCs of the
time.

* Spiritual Malware - see also "Roko's Basilisk"

* CRC manual - this is "the" handbook for chemistry, used by everyone
from students to meth cooks.

* Camel book - the Perl book by Larry Wall, published by Oreilly
  - Larry Wall is one of the rare outspoken Christians among the 30 or
so people that have made popular programming languages.
  - His webpage is great - http://www.wall.org/~larry/
  - Perl was *the* scripting language of the late 90s, but forked
itself into two incompatible versions and withered out.
  - OReilly is another colorful tech character - a book publisher of
technical manuals, who coined the phrase 'Web 2.0' after the dotcom
crash and pivoted to be a 'thought leader'

* Final Fantasy X - first Final Fantasy game on the PlayStation 2 -
massive leap forward from IX

* Netscape gray - Netscape's default background color for web pages
was gray, not white.

* I Believe You Have My Stapler - Mike Judge's Office Space

* robots.txt - a specification still used today, which lists which
pages on your web site may be indexed by search engines. It is
described correctly, it doesn't block web crawlers, only suggests they
skip a page.

* penet.fi - also a real anonymous remailer -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penet_remailer

* Markov chain where the transition matrix keeps resetting itself.
    * The Page Rank algorithm (with pseudo-random resets) was
developed at Google and essentially used this set up to rank web pages
    * The limit / stationary point of the markov chain is the first
eigenvector of the transition matrix.
    * Deep Archer is a reverse PageRank, which hides things instead of
finding them?

* Designer linkrot - linkrot is when URLs change and links don't work
anymore, which is penalized in search rankings. In the old days, if
you wanted to bury an online story, you could spam the comments
section with bad links to tank it's position in search results.

* Invisible pixels - still used to this day to track people across the
web, due to a bad design in the cookie specification.

I started my reread in Sep, about 10 chapters ahead of yall, but I'm
continued to be really impressed by how much of the period tech vibe
Pynchon was able to capture and how much detail he gets just right -
probably the only other thing that comes close is Mike Judge's Silicon
Valley.

On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 9:13 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> BE Chapter 7 summary
>
> Maxine goes to Justin and Vyrva’s to check out Deep Archer.
> Otis and Fiona go into her room to play with assorted action figures first buying clothes for Melanie with her gold card and ending in the violent destruction of Melanies Mall and singing ‘It’s cool at the Mall”
> Lucas arrives late after search for weed,  wearing UTSL t-shirt  ( Use the source Luke)
> Max says she is not good at these things. Lucas says not a game. Justin says has gaming influences, visuals by Luke, Lucas credits other influences:  “Neo-Tokyo from Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Metal Gear Solid by Hideo Kojima, or as he’s known around my crib, God.”
> “The further in you go, as you get passed along one node to the next, the visuals you think you’re seeing are being contributed by users all over the world. All for free. Hacker ethic. Each one doing their piece of it, then just vanishing uncredited.”
> Lucas explains she will be represented by 3D image called avatar. crossing into new world
> It’s code says Justin.
> We get a back story  of J and L which to summarize, they met in Stanford in computer science working together and soon pitching to VCs until they meet a VC and drink together and he writes big check which they never cash. They see him again at a Soap Box Derby but decide not to ask about check. Later decide they need more discipline and go to NYC Silcon Alley where they get seed money. Continue work on DA. Socializing,getting into trade journals Justin and V put down on house. Lucas lost a lot investing before dot com crash.
>     They take Maxine up to Justin’s workspace, and
> “DeepArcher Central,” Lucas with one of those may-I-introduce armwaves. Visual setting synthesis of sunny california ( Justin)and darker rainy windswept dangerous spaces( Lucas).  Maxine opens large screen; Lucas rolls joints.
> “A tall figure, dressed in black, could be either sex, long hair pulled back with a silver clip, The Archer, has journeyed to the edge of a great abyss. Down the road behind, in forced perspective, recede the sunlit distances of the surface world, wild country, farmland, suburbs, expressways, misted city towers. The rest of the screen is claimed by the abyss—far from an absence, it is a darkness pulsing with whatever light was before light was invented. The Archer is poised at its edge, bow fully drawn, enters a kind of train station, graphics like she has never seen hesitates then  begins exploring then gets on train and is off. After pleasant ride  she comes to darker seedier space, smells pot, exits and
> They have reconvened downstairs at the kitchen table. The more loaded the partners get and the more smoke in the air, the more comfortable they seem to grow talking about DeepArcher, though it’s hacker stuff Maxine has trouble following. “What’s known as bleeding-edge technology,” sez Lucas. “No proven use, high risk,……
>
> ...“What remailers do is pass data packets on from one node to the next with only enough information to tell each link in the chain where the next one is, no more. DeepArcher goes a step further and forgets where it’s been, immediately, forever.” “Kind of like a Markov chain, where the transition matrix keeps resetting itself.”
> “At random.”
> “At pseudorandom.”...
> …”vanishing and relocating as soon as it’s clicked on . . . an invisible self-recoding pathway, no chance of retracing it.”
> “But if the route in is erased behind you, how do you get back out?”
> “Click your heels three times,” Lucas sez, “and . . . no wait, that’s something else . . .”
>
> So that is it.   Maxine goes to  check out Deep Archer, takes her first ride in deep web and gets an idea of what makes Deep Archer unique, 'bleeding edge' both as code and as experience. Also we learn more about Justin and Lucas.
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l