The issue is more that corporations rather than governments themselves are the ones controlling the masses.
It’s closest to a fascist dystopia through its context of regulatory capture.
While corporatocracy is a grave ill, it is not moreso than the bigger picture present in the article, which is that the nature of reality is bending in a PKDish fashion. Reality and the unreal are infecting each other. This is a Baudrillardian simulacrum.
It's not even proper to say it's constrained to fascism as the unreality springs from non-authoritarian sources like flat-earth memes, wikipedia wars and distraction leading to an amnesia of how to actually live properly and we're doing to ourselves.
FTA: Dick believed that we all live in a world where “spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups—and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into heads of the reader.”
FTA: Most notoriously, the current U.S. president recently retweeted a flattering message that appears to have come from a bot densely connected to a network of other bots, which some believe to be controlled by the Russian government and used for propaganda purposes.
A common theme in several of his novels and a number of short stories were simulations (simulacra, automatons) being integrated into our cultural concepts. Even to the point that people believe that their leaders are real, while really they're just simulated characters putting on a show.
Nothing comes to mind, but take this quote from A Scanner Darkly: "Activity does not necessarily mean life, and motion that is circular is the deadest form of the universe."
This type of article about PKD comes around more and more often these days.
What Dick really got his fingernails under was the idea that our subjective reality, our semantic map of the real, has become more real to us than any objective reality. He probes this at many levels, from that of our individual perceptron driving our subjective reality (eg. Dr Bloodmoney, A Scanner Darkly) or even the perceptron of others or another being so overwhelmingly powerful that it drives our reality (eg. Flow my Tears, Our Friends from Frolix 8). He also explores more directly manufactured realities, as in Ubik and The Simulacra, where forces actively set out to deceive, both out of compassion and cruelty - and sometimes just because.
Jean Baudrillard formulated much of PKD’s weltanschauung in his Simulacra and Simulation, which is as mind-bending a collection of essays as one is ever likely to read.
A particular recurrent topic for both is the idea that “The Empire Never Ended” - that we live in the latter-day Roman Empire, having inherited our fundamental western Judeo-Christian semantic symbol set from the commingling of Roman culture (Mithratic cult, god co-option, etc.) with first century Palestinian culture. Our map of reality is that which was last substantially updated then, and everything we have done since is on the map, rather than the underlying reality.
It all gets very gnostic (another favourite theme of PKD’s), but I do think that there’s a fundamental and valid observation that is made and expounded upon about the malleable nature of human reality.
In today’s world of ubiquitous hyperreality, sensationalised and manufactured narratives, instantaneous and often wildly speculative coverage of ambiguous events so far removed from us yet seemingly right on our doorstep, this philosophy becomes deeply compelling.
That reminds me - Hypernormalisation, an Adam
Curtis documentary, provides a light introduction to many of these ideas, if a bit of Baudrillard is a steep start.
> What Dick really got his fingernails under was the idea that our subjective reality, our semantic map of the real, has become more real to us than any objective reality.
[Warning, will discuss spoilers about a PKD story]
He does this well in his short story Total Recall. The objective reality is written over by memory implementations. However, he still feels the desire to go to Mars because no memory implantation can override his inherit nature. The Grand Truth is so bizarre that during it's first uncovering everyone believes it is a fantasy. When objective truth is proven true it terrifies those that know it.
> The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
I was astounded at the number of product placements in that film!
And that there were obvious placements for competing products, like Coke and Pepsi.
Some of them were hilariously anachronistic, like advertisements for Fuji Film.
I can't remember any other movie that was quite so frequent and obvious about product placement, and I definitely didn't get the impression they were trying to be ironic and channeling PKD's social commentary on the advertising industry. It just seemed like good old fashioned shameless marketing.
I googled around and apparently I'm not the only person who noticed it. ;)
He mentions that the book "Product Placement in Hollywood Films" estimates there are 55 appearances of 28 brands in Total Recall.
Best Western wasn't happy with the how their logo was used in the Martian Red Light District next to a pink neon ADULT MOVIES store sign, and how they only got 2.5 seconds instead of their expected 5 seconds of exposure.
Well I guess it succeeded artistically in giving me the impression that it was totally shameless marketing and not just another PKD conspiracy theory.
In this universe, maybe Fuji Film instead of Kodak is in still business and on your desk today, if only because of that shrewd giant blinking billboard of a product placement, that made them seem "futuristic" to generations of Schwarzenegger fans. (Not exactly the butterfly effect, but the stockholders will take it.)
It might not be quite as hardcore-cursed as Poltergeist or The Omen, but Blade Runner has a curse of its own … on the businesses whose logos appear in the film. Atari, Pan Am, RCA, Cuisinart, and Bell Phones all suffered severe business problems in the years shortly after Blade Runner’s release, as did Coca-Cola, whose 1985 “New Coke” experiment was less than successful. Members of the Blade Runner production team refer to this as the “product-placement Blade Runner curse.”
21 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 64.1 ms ] threadI mean I guess we did, by a different kind of SoMa...
It's not even proper to say it's constrained to fascism as the unreality springs from non-authoritarian sources like flat-earth memes, wikipedia wars and distraction leading to an amnesia of how to actually live properly and we're doing to ourselves.
FTA: Dick believed that we all live in a world where “spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups—and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into heads of the reader.”
FTA: Most notoriously, the current U.S. president recently retweeted a flattering message that appears to have come from a bot densely connected to a network of other bots, which some believe to be controlled by the Russian government and used for propaganda purposes.
So, yes?
What Dick really got his fingernails under was the idea that our subjective reality, our semantic map of the real, has become more real to us than any objective reality. He probes this at many levels, from that of our individual perceptron driving our subjective reality (eg. Dr Bloodmoney, A Scanner Darkly) or even the perceptron of others or another being so overwhelmingly powerful that it drives our reality (eg. Flow my Tears, Our Friends from Frolix 8). He also explores more directly manufactured realities, as in Ubik and The Simulacra, where forces actively set out to deceive, both out of compassion and cruelty - and sometimes just because.
Jean Baudrillard formulated much of PKD’s weltanschauung in his Simulacra and Simulation, which is as mind-bending a collection of essays as one is ever likely to read.
A particular recurrent topic for both is the idea that “The Empire Never Ended” - that we live in the latter-day Roman Empire, having inherited our fundamental western Judeo-Christian semantic symbol set from the commingling of Roman culture (Mithratic cult, god co-option, etc.) with first century Palestinian culture. Our map of reality is that which was last substantially updated then, and everything we have done since is on the map, rather than the underlying reality.
It all gets very gnostic (another favourite theme of PKD’s), but I do think that there’s a fundamental and valid observation that is made and expounded upon about the malleable nature of human reality.
In today’s world of ubiquitous hyperreality, sensationalised and manufactured narratives, instantaneous and often wildly speculative coverage of ambiguous events so far removed from us yet seemingly right on our doorstep, this philosophy becomes deeply compelling.
That reminds me - Hypernormalisation, an Adam Curtis documentary, provides a light introduction to many of these ideas, if a bit of Baudrillard is a steep start.
[Warning, will discuss spoilers about a PKD story]
He does this well in his short story Total Recall. The objective reality is written over by memory implementations. However, he still feels the desire to go to Mars because no memory implantation can override his inherit nature. The Grand Truth is so bizarre that during it's first uncovering everyone believes it is a fantasy. When objective truth is proven true it terrifies those that know it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY5KTVA_2ys
I was astounded at the number of product placements in that film!
And that there were obvious placements for competing products, like Coke and Pepsi.
Some of them were hilariously anachronistic, like advertisements for Fuji Film.
I can't remember any other movie that was quite so frequent and obvious about product placement, and I definitely didn't get the impression they were trying to be ironic and channeling PKD's social commentary on the advertising industry. It just seemed like good old fashioned shameless marketing.
I googled around and apparently I'm not the only person who noticed it. ;)
TOTAL RECALL and the psychology of product placement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSt2Xbiypsk
He mentions that the book "Product Placement in Hollywood Films" estimates there are 55 appearances of 28 brands in Total Recall.
Best Western wasn't happy with the how their logo was used in the Martian Red Light District next to a pink neon ADULT MOVIES store sign, and how they only got 2.5 seconds instead of their expected 5 seconds of exposure.
https://imgur.com/a/aSaoN0w
I always thought the Total Recall product placement was intentional and looking around our present future it was spot on.
In this universe, maybe Fuji Film instead of Kodak is in still business and on your desk today, if only because of that shrewd giant blinking billboard of a product placement, that made them seem "futuristic" to generations of Schwarzenegger fans. (Not exactly the butterfly effect, but the stockholders will take it.)
https://imgur.com/a/3jHzwl6
Here are some Blade Runner product placements:
https://productplacementblog.com/tag/blade-runner-1982/
I love the Atari placements:
https://productplacementblog.com/movies/atari-in-blade-runne...
Apparently product placement in Blade Runner is a curse:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/67956/10-fascinating-facts-ab...
10. IT’S CURSED.
It might not be quite as hardcore-cursed as Poltergeist or The Omen, but Blade Runner has a curse of its own … on the businesses whose logos appear in the film. Atari, Pan Am, RCA, Cuisinart, and Bell Phones all suffered severe business problems in the years shortly after Blade Runner’s release, as did Coca-Cola, whose 1985 “New Coke” experiment was less than successful. Members of the Blade Runner production team refer to this as the “product-placement Blade Runner curse.”
not sure why you think that. It's a Paul Verhoeven movie and Robocop had similar themes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16243067