M-maybe there is a Machine to take us away, take us completely, suck us through the electrodes out of the skull 'n' into the Machine and live there forever with all the other souls it's got stored there. It could decide who it would suck out, a-and when. Dope never gave you immortality. You hadda come back, every time, into a dying hunk of smelly meat! But We can live forever, in a clean, honest, purified, Electroworld -
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- The speaker imagines a machine that could upload consciousness, offering eternal life but also selective death, contrasting with the impermanence of the flesh.
- In plain terms
- A machine could give eternal life but also choose who lives.
- What can you take from it?
- Consider the ethical costs of seeking digital immortality.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Is eternal digital life truly desirable?
Another view
Speculative; assumes a deterministic machine control.
More from Thomas Pynchon
It can get pretty fascist in here...
Permalink to quote #48 What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?
Permalink to quote #50 It's a giant factory-state here, a City of the Future full of extrapolated 1930's swoop-facaded and balconied skyscrapers, lean chrome caryatids with bobbed ha…
Permalink to quote #47
Related quotes
Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
Alan WattsAlan Watts quote #35 Et maiores vestros et posteros cogitate.
TacitusTacitus quote #3 If we have learned anything at all in this century, it is that all new technologies will be put to use, sooner or later, for better or worse, as it is in our n…
Lewis ThomasLewis Thomas quote #6