A “Tryst with Tristero”: The Crying of Lot 49, The Internet, and Government Spying
Thomas Pynchon’s novel, The Crying of Lot 49 famously depicts an underground communication system, WASTE, which is utilized by society’s outcasts: political revolutionaries, sexual deviants, the poor, minorities, etc. The role of WASTE as underground postal service ties in heavily with the Cold War paranoia, not of nuclear war, but of government intrusion into communications. “Write by WASTE,” says a woman in the novel to her activist son, “The government will open it if you don’t.” The start of the Cold War was, arguably, the start of a new era in control over the populace by the Federal Government. Spying on citizens, opening of mail, and a general culture of enforced conformity were all weapons used by the United States Government to enact controls on the populace, and reduce dissent.
The idea of an underground postal system on the scale of WASTE in Lot 49 seems absurd, the concerns of government intrusion into communication are still real. Reading the news beings up no shortage of recent stories on warrantless wiretapping of phone calls. In addition, the PATRIOT act allows the government to see what you’ve checked out of the library, and the Bush Administration has even claimed the right to read your mail. You don’t even have to be a potential dissident—ordinary citizens are having this happen to them. Government intrusion into private communication is more prevalent now than it has been, even at the time Pynchon wrote Lot 49. Despite the increased scale, the rational is the same now as it was in the 6s, it was Communism, and now it’s Terrorism.
Pynchon, however, in writing Lot 49 could not foresee the development of the Internet, nor its rise as a means of mass communication for millions. In its own way, the Internet has become a digital WASTE system, allowing for underground communication on a massive scale, unprecedented by anything, even the telephone. Its semi-decentralized structure allows for a strong level of anonymity, which can be increased by proxy servers, encryption software, and other technologies. Furthermore, encryption technologies and darknets allow communication that is made much more secure from outside intrusion than ever before.[1] This has been both a strength, and a weakness of the Internet. Groups of all stripes, from harmless perverts[2] and drug users, to terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda and its syncretic offshoots.
Unsurprisingly, the American and other governments have tried to crack down on the ability to communicate, privately, by the internet. The FBI has even developed a wiretapping like system for the Internet, Carnivore, to spy on e-mail and web browsing. Nations like China establish firewalls to block websites that could be damaging to social controls. It is a tug-of-war struggle for communication that, like the fictional conflict between Tristero and the agents of Thurn und Taxis in Lot 49 ultimately determines who has control over the people’s ability to communicate. In this case, we can only hope for Tristero, and the decentralized Internet to win out.
- It’s not a surprise that a secure peer-to-peer file sharing app was named WASTE in reference to Lot 49. ↩
- Also, admittedly, not-so-harmless perverts such as NAMBLA ↩
