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Philip K. Dick Speaks (Sorta)
futileboy writes "Erik Davis put together this posthumous interview of Philip K. Dick from some tapes he found (he explains how it came together in his introduction to the interview). It comes off pretty clean."
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Oh wow, "Electronic Voice phenomenon?" Spare me. All this page needed was a midi playing "Age of Aquarius."
PKD's writing are strongly rationalist with an intelligent approach to figuring out the strange phenomenon in his life. I think its insulting to turn him into a new age "John Edwards" bullshit spiritual medium commodity.
> Subsequent research proved, however, that all of the quotations have already made an appearance somewhere in Dick's fiction, letters, or essays.
No shit. Maybe because the "voice" he heard on the tape was nothing more than the subconscious projecting quotes hes read elsewhere onto nothing more than tape static and other ambigious sounds from the original recording.
Maybe next week slashdot can expose how Ozzy put all those satanic messages into his albums.
... we will have done so much speculating about how it will behave that the poor thing will probably just have a nervous breakdown and explode. Imagine being born and being presented with a huge book psychoanalysing your every emotion and impression in detail. The pressure to go crazy and enslave mankind would be enough to make you go crazy and enslave mankind.
I am much more interested to hear what sci-fi authors have to say about near-future technologies (e.g. the stuff in this article about surveillance systems) than what they have to say about what things will be like when the earth is ruled by superintelligent robots.
Girl: Remember when those cyborgs enslaved humanity?
Fry: Uh... yeah, that rings a bell.
Read Pynchon.
There are times, however, when we need to revisit the past, to get a better perception of the present.
The man had an incredible insight into the social development of mankind as a whole.
He was the fictional equivalent of Alvin Toffler, (i.e. Future Shock), and Desmond Morris, (i.e. The Naked Ape).
It never fails to amaze me how often we lose sight of our collective image. It's things like this that make me slow down, and look around.
It kind of goes to prove that old adage (variously attributed to C.S Lewis or Aurthur C. Clarke) science fiction is the only genuine consciousness expanding drug. (Trust me, I have checked).
Mind you, I think someone should have told P. K. Dick that before 1982.
Favourite Quote: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Actual quote from linked article:
I do seem attracted to trash, as if the clue lies there.
Feh, most great minds are. His waning years sound rather like the trials of Kurt Vonnegut. Disillusioned with the fact that his recent literature has not been well recieved, he blames it on the population rather than himself. It's a shame though: Kurt Vonnegut's earlier work was revolutionary, just like Philip K. Dick's writings.
ya ya ya.
Last guy said about humor.
My reply stands so read it.
As far as PKD, I've read him and loved his work.
I myself do have a very dark sense of humor.
However, moronic slapstick isn't my bag-o-tea.
It reads too much like any number of the litany of tinfoil hat wearing-new age powerbead wearing-ufo worshipping-cia fearing-midnight anal probing-black helicopter flying-mayan calander datebook reading-illuminati singing bavarian folksongs over fat steins at the WTO commitee meeting-psychic wormhole tunneling-mindfield bending-time traveling-ramtha worshipping-crystal rubbing-crop circle hunting-chem trail conspiracy-antichrist numerology-mankind as reptoid slave race-hollow earth-awww what the fuck geocity uber-conspiracy circle jerk
FOR ME TO EVEN TRY TO LAUGH.
'cuz it just ain't funny.
So enough about the "humor".
Just because some one tries to be funny doesn't mean they can even come close.
And the best joke of all...
Everyone understand pain and suffering.
Very few will find your joke funny.
Universal turmoil vs. the "in-joke".
Now that's comedy.
As somebody who continually goes back and re-reads his various stories (I'm a big fan of "The Man in High Castle" and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep") it was nice to see some quotes from PKD that I haven't seen before.
I especially liked the ambulance analogy with respect to entropy. It could be an interesting debate trying to figure out if saving the man increased or decreased the order of the universe...
But rather than having Davis' questions, I would have preferred to see a transcript of the comments without editing. I feel like many of the "questions" to be leading to an interesting/profound reply was undoubtedly not related to the question that was "asked" by Davis and I'm sure he ended up cutting something out that could have been much more interesting/profound.
PKD's genius lay in his ability to look at questions which have no answers - but asking questions to pre-recorded PKD comments seems like a rigged game of cosmic "Jeopardy".
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I have rather strong reasons -- nuclear reactions proceed in nanoseconds. Human brains react in milliseconds at best. Secondly, the circuitry that you'd need to process the raw data from the reactor into something analog the brain could deal with, then do the reverse to control the reactor would be more complex than a purely digital system that didn't use brains at all. And if you really did want to put brains in the loop, use something simpler like cockroaches or goldfish that don't need to be entertained.
Did you ever think maybe the machines are LYING to the humans about why they keep people alive and run the Matrix?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat