Hacker Cinema
Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams
2017 · TV series · 1 season
Created by Philip K. Dick
A diverse anthology of ambitious, moving tales inspired by Philip K Dick's short stories.
7 positive1 negative7 neutralfrom 15 commenters
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15 comments on Hacker News
It sorta reminds me of the series "Electric Dreams" on Amazon Prime. Select stories from Philip K. Dick! Great stuff!
The hubris of Amazon airing the "Autofac" episode though, holy crap. I mean if ANYONE on this planet is the likely source of some "Autofac"-styled nightmare its Amazon. Makes me throw up a little in my mouth.
Great point, and great story, with a terrible ending that illustrates the point about Adobe and Autodesk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofac
Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Episode 8 (Autofac)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902176/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCLlXrn840M
> I just find the spirit of his work so depressing
I don't. I think he paints up depressing worlds often, but there's also a spirit of perseverance, of ingenuity, of "life goes on". His characters are occasionally soldiers, but more often workers and everyday people doing their things. In a Nazi alt-history dystopia, he takes the time to explain how an antiquarian earns his living. [1]
In some dystopia were mankind loses a war against aliens, he makes the aliens sympathetic enough to give the remaining humans a fiction to believe in that will make them want to keep on living. The aliens are also quite forgiving and want to rebuild Earth after the war. [2]
When robots take over humanity, hidden in underground caves after a terrible war between the East and the West Blocs, they are actually hiding the fact they rebuilt the world and it's green and healthy, ready for us to re-enter it. [3]
When an alien invader supplants the horrible husband of the woman protagonist, she finds the alien is actually loving and caring, and prefers it to her husband. [4]
When a (possibly deranged) dog sees threats to the family it loves in everyday things, like the milkman or the garbage truck "stealing their garbage", it does this out of love and fierce loyalty -- however misplaced. [5] (or is it..?)
When an authoritarian interstellar military force wants to punish Earth for having ruined it all, those cheeky earthers invent an elusive rebel leader, Benny Cemoli, and pin all the blame on him; keeping the military force occupied chasing ghosts seemingly forever. [6]
When an underhanded authoritarian government is shaping up covertly in Callisto, Earth agents find the way to dismantle it -- and in the process, PKD shows his vision that there's no concept as absurd and easy to subvert as the concept of "a just war". The good guys win though. [7]
I agree PKD often imagined visions of dystopian hell, but he just as often offered nuggets of hope and everyday life. A bit like Bradbury, only more surreal.
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[1] "The Man in the High Castle"
[2] "Precious Artifact"
[3] Can't remember the title of this one, sorry
[4] Also cannot remember the title. It was included as an episode of PKD's Electric Dreams.
[5] "Roog"
[6] "If there were no Benny Cemoli"
[7] "The mold of Yancy"
sounds a little like autofac by philip k dick[1]. there's an electric dreams episode about it, ironically streaming on amazon[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofac
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902176/
Heavily reminds me of the episode "Autofac" from television series "Electric Dreams," a major plot device of which is megacorp [in the show, obviously a satirical take on Amazon] delivering unwanted packages to the [apparent] last survivors of post-cataclysmic humanity
Dramatized in an episode of Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams.
The article amounts to little more than subversion in normal speech under surveillance, it's not as if Google can't read and make at least some limited sense of most of things you do or say during your interactions with it. You can point gaping holes in that behavior but the fact is that Google has you by the balls in terms of the data it's collecting on you and as time passes it will get better at making sense of lots of it, even if you can subvert it easily enough. Maybe it's hinting that going forward the cognoscenti should exercise this sort of subversive speech to confuse the AI.
Machines thinking for humans was one of the hypotheses in Yuval Noah Harari's book Homo Deus, he calls it dataism. To me it seems to be a recipe for how can corporations can wrestle control of thinking from human beings to render them into mere drones. This seems to be on the agenda of the Silicon Valley elites as they have seemingly adopted him as their pet historian/philosopher. May you live in interesting times.
I have been thinking about this and it seems that it could work but I don't see how it could work considering that there is always a conflict of interest between what corporations want and what an individual or a business wants. So in a world where you have agents that belong to you and are required by law as through fiduciary duty to follow your interests it's possible for such agents to exist. But it will never work if Google or Facebook owns these agents or the data on which the agents make their decisions without transparency.
Also see Autofac episode of Electric Dreams on Amazon Prime Video: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902176/
That's a pretty interesting episode, S01E03 for those who are curious. The Electric Dreams series also has an interesting episode on this (S01E05), but focusing more on virtual reality than re-living your own past (although one can easily imagine a VR of your own memories).
> Maybe we really don't need social security
I think the libertarian idea is that we really don't need social security through threat of violence. There's a notion of the role of "private" charity. Libertarians aren't necessarily selfish or unempathetic.
Contributing to something for the common benefit can also be borderline-coerced through social pressure. This is explored somewhat in P K Dick's short story "Foster, You're Dead!" (one of the ones adapted into something rather different in the Electric Dreams TV Series)
http://www.sffaudio.com/podcasts/FosterYoureDeadByPhilipK.DickSSF3.pdf
Although I found the story to somewhat muddy the waters by the world having both individual/private bomb shelters and a pay-per-use public one, as well as having a subscription-based communal shelter in the school. The town's defense was community paid but optional (through social pressure).
Of course that's fiction, and we're all aware of real life examples of "tragedy of the commons", but human nature isn't entirely one-sided, either. Aren't there examples of "pay what you want" or "pay what you think is fair" schemes that work?
By contrast, Netflix’s 4K HDR of Altered Carbon (on TV with full array local dimming) was the highest quality stream I’ve seen. Some of Amazon’s Electric Dreams episodes come close. When I compare the same 4K Dolby Vision or HDR show between Amazon and Netflix played on the TV itself, I’d argue Netflix often has the edge.
But the show being in HDR or DV, using extra bits for shadows, and kicking in the TV’s HDR blacks, makes more difference to banding than the distribution.
Not coincidentally, anticipating Altered Carbon and this winter’s updates for Dolby Vision across the industry prompted my TV upgrade. Having been in the streaming video business from 1998, it felt like a milestone to have a TV quality purchase driven by an online show.
Wasn’t this an episode of Electric Dreams? So we are going full Phillip K Dick now.
You should watch the “Autofac” episode of Electric Dreams.
The Electric Dreams episode "Safe and Sound" also explores these issues, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6980876/
For those into Black Mirror or PKD, new show called "Electric Dreams" is based on PKD short stories - I recommend it, a few excellent episodes.
Speaking of, I was quite disappointed with the new "Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams" show, now on Amazon. They are decidedly not faithful to the short stories they're based on, and in several cases choose a conclusion that is diametrically opposite to what PKD intended.
In "Impossible Planet" they go for a weirdly romantic ending that is the opposite of the story, and turns it into some kind of wish fulfillment fantasy.
"Autofac" starts great, but then introduces a twist that makes no sense. Dick's story is extremely dark (taking the automatic, unstoppable factory idea to its logical next step), and the final ending essentially makes the whole premise pointless, turning a smart comment on runaway consumerism and automation into a cheap thriller about love conquering all.
Film adaptations have generally been unable to make something faithful to PKD. I just wish someone would have the balls to do it, because it could be fantastic.