U. fixes on this. He can’t quite articulate why, but I think this the figure of modernity for him. And, you know, a lot of the imagery Nietzsche uses when he talks about the death of God is about falling through infinite space, where we have nothing to hold us to sky or the earth or the ground anymore.
And becomes this kind of parachutist in data space, just wondering if the chords are there. There is also the idea of a crash, a systems crash. The crash of a body on the ground. The event horizon of all of this is some kind of crash. I mean its Icarus isn’t it?
http://flavorwire.com/506844/kafka-and-the-crash-of-the-system-an-interview-with-tom-mccarthy
"Writing Machines" an essay by Tom McCarthy on realism and the real from the London Review of Books
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n24/tom-mccarthy/writing-machines
"Satin Island" a novel by Tom McCarthy
http://www.amazon.com/Satin-Island-novel-Tom-McCarthy/dp/0307593959/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1424996094&sr=1-1&keywords=tom+mccarthy