Sorry for taking so long to reply! ^^; I'm almost finished with the book. I got to the part where you learn about everyone working all the time, and I was like, this is so America in the 50s and 60s, when the economy was revving up like a jet engine, and there was plentiful work for all (white males).
Something else I noticed was that even though there are machines, and things like natural-language computers and the internet (the GI system and its crystal storage banks), all the machines are always operated by people, there's never any automation. Maybe that's because Delaney's not-a-utopia-I-swear world is basically communist except in periods when the gov't allows some capitalism so something new can be developed, so there's no cutthroat race-to-the-bottom going on. After all, the book was written in 1984, so it's not like automation and offshoring didn't exist in Delaney's universe.
Korga isn't even a stupid person!! ...I wonder how much of that feminist stuff he was able to remember, after he wasn't plugged in to the System anymore. Possibly a lot, after all it's not like there were a lot of very intense experiences in his brain for those to displace, and the pleasure of reading those books is the closest he comes to an actual emotional experience after undergoing the RAT, so they must've made a pretty big mark (since strong emotions encoded learning more deeply) (I am sticking to my original assessment that Radical Anxiety Termination works by suppressing ALL emotions, not just "anxiety", because the explanation for how "anxiety" is jammed makes like, no sense XD).
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-09 02:13 am (UTC)Something else I noticed was that even though there are machines, and things like natural-language computers and the internet (the GI system and its crystal storage banks), all the machines are always operated by people, there's never any automation. Maybe that's because Delaney's not-a-utopia-I-swear world is basically communist except in periods when the gov't allows some capitalism so something new can be developed, so there's no cutthroat race-to-the-bottom going on. After all, the book was written in 1984, so it's not like automation and offshoring didn't exist in Delaney's universe.
Korga isn't even a stupid person!! ...I wonder how much of that feminist stuff he was able to remember, after he wasn't plugged in to the System anymore. Possibly a lot, after all it's not like there were a lot of very intense experiences in his brain for those to displace, and the pleasure of reading those books is the closest he comes to an actual emotional experience after undergoing the RAT, so they must've made a pretty big mark (since strong emotions encoded learning more deeply) (I am sticking to my original assessment that Radical Anxiety Termination works by suppressing ALL emotions, not just "anxiety", because the explanation for how "anxiety" is jammed makes like, no sense XD).