Since I will not be able to join y'all in July, I was planning to not read UBIK (mythologically incorrect split infinitive!). Surprisingly, even to myself, I finished it last night. Couldn't put it down, if nothing else, because I wanted to see how it was going to wrap up.
Amazing how Dick can predict something akin to a web browser with instant access to up-to-date information, yet still describing analog tapes, phonographs, and LPs.
One somewhat pedantic and unsurprising line (on this edition's pp. 81-82) particularly hit me because it expresses my own, daily, ambiguous relationship with technology and machines : "One of these days," Joe said wrathfully, "people like me will rise up and overthrow you, and the end of tyranny by the homeostatic machine will have arrived. The day of human values and compassion and simple warmth will return. . . ."
Technology is no longer our tool, but our matrix.
1 comment:
That's too bad that you won't be there to share your thoughts - also, we are in Chicago, so we will be unable to make the wine and cheese shindig (sp?) Take a spray of the Ubik - but take only as directed.
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