On page 51 DeLillo talks about how secrets and information "This is what he knows, that the genius of the bomb is printed not only in its physics of particles and rays, but in the occasion it creates for new secrets." The CW was really all about who could keep secrets better: everything was kept underground and information had to be hoarded because if the other side found out about anything then they had more power. This calls to mind Pychon's line "Is it any wonder the world's gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange?" Although the books may or may not relate to different wars (WWII vs. the Cold War) both writers seem to believe that information is not only important in war but in life in general. I wrote about this topic in GR which is probably why I noticed this quote in Underworld, but I am really interested in this topic. Wars are about power, and both these quotes seem to reinforce the idea that knowledge is power.
Good link to the Pynchon quote, I think you're definitely on to something there. Speaking as someone in a pathologically love-hate relationship with academia, I think Pynchon's idea, information totalizing exchange --> insanity, applies disturbingly well to contemporary academic institutions. Many times, "Theory," that ineffably monolithic capital "T" structure everyone likes to reference talk about in the important-sounding singular like this, seems, all too often, to mean discourse about discourse itself. So many papers are about the potential of certain discursive trends, and the potential of certain conceptualizations of potential. Discourses spawn new discourses about other older discourses, which obviously turns quickly into a recursive nightmare. The internet has enabled this process even further. Now, for instance, you or I don't have to wait to make our discourse about discourse public, we can do so through the medium of this blog! No credentials necessary. This is both liberating (those rarefied standards of academic writing are just exclusionary anyway, right?) but also frightening. If truth is multiple and but a play of signifiers, then the production of truth - of information - is on hyperdrive these days. The Gravity's Rainbow quote seems to suggest that alienation is deeply is stake here. The information economy is great; it's great that I can escape your ills by logging on to Second Life is great in some ways. But at what cost? It makes sense that the lack of tangible experience would get to people, but there's nothing to necessarily imply that intangible = inauthentic. In fact, maybe we've had too much tangible experience. Sure we might not embrace people anymore, but there's no Auschwitz in Second Life. I'm puzzled.