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One of (Ubik author) Phil Dick's great insights was that our relationship with machines would be intrusive and passive aggressive. Flying advert drones project
by deepnet 11y ago
One of (Ubik author) Phil Dick's great insights was that our relationship with machines would be intrusive and passive aggressive.
Flying advert drones projecting adverts onto pedestrian's retinas; home appliances like fridges that refuse to open until sufficient coinage is inserted - a prescient vision.
- oldmanjay 11y agoI love PKD, I can't get enough, but I feel like you only get to qualify a prediction as prescient once it comes to pass.
- deepnet 11y agoUbik reverses cultural causality: a product, UBIK, travels back in time affecting the aesthetics of the present by altering the past. Or rather, advertising makes you feel it has always been this way. Ubik is a Madison Avenue version of Orwell's 1984, rebranding the past. In this everyday dystopia, we've never had it so good despite having so little. But Dick was not just prescient, he was writing what it was like where he was, when he was. All the dystopian elements of his Sci-Fi were his contemporary struggles. Paraphrasing Gibson: Dystopia is already here, it just hasn't hit home yet. Dick's protagonist argues with his fridge, he wants the milk but the fridge is demanding money it claims he owes the refrigeration company.