Is it time to revisit the novels of Philip K. Dick? Sohrab Ahmari, founder of Compact, finds a particular relevance in his novels:
Advancement and decay. AI and the opioid holocaust. Machine learning and crumbling bungalows. The internet of things and terrible infrastructure. Smartphones and the scattershot, permanently distracted mind of the American child. These phenomena, as Philip K. Dick foresaw, aren’t necessarily opposed, but go together. Some forms of technology more than others—those that help us take flight to virtuality at the expense of the material world, or that outsource the human animal’s cognition and sociality to machines—seem to coincide with a pervasive degradation. To see this paradox already at work, we need but look around at the modern American city.
Top image: Blade runner 2049 picture for free use.png/ Wikimedia Commons
Yes! I read some Dick last summer (specifically Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (the story Total Recall is based on), and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and I thought, “Well, this was prescient!” But I suppose the best sci-fi always is.
What does "midrash" mean?
Yes! I read some Dick last summer (specifically Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (the story Total Recall is based on), and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and I thought, “Well, this was prescient!” But I suppose the best sci-fi always is.
From the Compact piece it sounds like you read the most relevant works!
Another discussion of Dick here, which I listened to several months ago and am now fuzzy on: https://www.spreaker.com/user/15144188/a-scanner-darkly-on-william-ramsey-inves
Nice, thanks for the tip!
Discomfortingly on point.