December 16 marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of the American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. In his works, he often turned to the then utopian world of robots and other high technologies. Often Dick tried to warn the reader about the dangers of introducing technology into everyday life. At the same time, predicting the future, the writer was amazingly accurate in details - it was not for nothing that Dick considered himself a visionary. In honor of the anniversary, we talk about technologies from the stories and novels of Philip K. Dick, which have already entered the life of a modern person, as well as a little about what to expect in the near future.
Throughout his adult life, Philip K. Dick suffered from mental disorders, drug addiction and paranoia. Much of this was due to psychological trauma - his twin sister died at the age of five weeks. No matter how difficult it made his life, Dick's frustrations gave the world his genius: in almost every work, the writer raised the question of the reality of what was happening and he himself - along with the reader - answered it.
The feeling of the illusory nature of the worlds described by Dick was largely due to his "gift of prediction": the writer considered himself a seer, and in his dreams he often saw stories from the past and the future. Perhaps that is why its technological future - our present and the events we await in the near future - is shown with almost frightening accuracy. And this applies not only to androids - robots, every year thinking and looking more and more like people - but also other technologies.
Empatoscope and virtual reality
The empatoscopes that appear in Dick's dystopia Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Serve the characters in the universe as a way to connect with Wilber Mercer, a key figure in the religious philosophical doctrine of Mercerism. The empatoscope helps people to reconnect with the Messiah, to penetrate into his world. It can be considered a metaphor for many modern technologies: video games, online communication, and watching videos - all this takes us into a reality that is different from ours, but physically interconnected with it.
Promotional video:
If we talk about the most accurate embodiment of the empatoscope in real life, then it is, of course, virtual reality technologies, which first appeared in 1978 - a decade after Dick wrote his novel. Then the developers from MIT presented a simulation game of walking around the city of Aspen. Virtual reality at that time was still quite simple, but over the years it has become more complex and is now used not only for entertainment, but, for example, helps to study the internal structure of animals, and is also used in scientific research.
Modern virtual reality technologies, however, still rely on vision - in contrast to the fact that Dick's empatoscope consisted of special handles that transported the user's consciousness to another time and space. But today technologies are being developed that allow using other senses, thanks to which virtual reality has become available even to blind people.
In the future (already not far from us - we are talking about the 2050s), which is described in the story "Minority Report", the three main characters are mutants who help the police to prevent crimes. Mutants have the gift of foresight (or precognition) and can solve crimes that have not yet been committed and catch criminals who have not yet done anything.
In the modern world, this can still be called science fiction: no mutants with the gift of foresight work for any police in the world. However, big data analysis and statistical analysis are helping to “anticipate” the future now. Predictive analysis technologies for crime prevention began to be used by the Memphis police several years ago, and in 2010, thanks to analysts and technologies from IBM, the number of crimes decreased by 36.8 percent.
Analysis of other information, such as speech, today can also predict the development of various diseases. Thus, Dick's prediction from 1956 came true at least in part thanks to mathematics and the development of computer analysis. Predictive analysis technologies will continue to improve and may one day reach 100% accuracy. And no foresight is needed here.
The eye of a needle and military surveillance
The location of the source of signals received by the satellite has been learned to determine with high accuracy a long time ago. The military, however, do not use telephones, and often use other devices to transfer data: it is possible to determine their source, but it is difficult to obtain its geolocation data. A decade ago, DARPA was developing a technology that can pick out a certain signal on the air and determine its location: in 2008 they presented the GANDALF project, which (the authors did not hide it) was inspired by the "Needle Eye" from "Spiritual Rifle". Since then, the general public has not known anything about the further development of the project.
The US Air Force was planning something similar during the war in Afghanistan. Airship "Blue Devil" (TCOM Blue Devil), equipped with many different sensors to receive data, had to scan the terrain and send a signal about the location of the target to the military on the ground. It was not possible to use the airship in action: in 2011, the project was closed due to the high cost. After that, however, one of its leaders tried to engage in further development on their own, which is why the Air Force soon ceased cooperation with him.
E-therapy and genomic editing
The novel "The Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich" takes place in the future, in which the temperature of the earth's atmosphere has long exceeded the comfortable temperature for humans (a kind of hyperbolization of the global warming that is actually happening in our time). Accordingly, people either colonize other habitable planets, or remain on Earth, fleeing the consequences of the catastrophe that struck the planet, using special cooling equipment and drugs. In the novel, a certain Dr. Denkmal also trades, inviting everyone to accelerate the process of their evolution with the help of E-Therapy, which is somewhat reminiscent of genomic editing, which appeared back in the 1970s.
In recent years, these technologies have been developing rapidly: last year, using the zinc fingers method, for the first time, it was possible to edit the genome of a living person, and quite recently the use of this method began to give first results. It is worth mentioning the incredibly popular now CRISPR / Cas9, although, if we talk about its application on living people, the technique is rather controversial. In 2016, it was allowed to be used on live embryos, and, for example, last year, American scientists announced that using CRISPR / Cas9 they managed to rid the embryos of heart disease.
Until now, embryos have been edited only for research and medical purposes, and then destroyed. Recently, however, Chinese scientist Jiankui He reported that his patient gave birth to twins, who had an artificially altered gene responsible for susceptibility to HIV, and then announced the pregnancy of another of his patients. Despite the fact that He's statement does not inspire confidence in everyone, and also contradicts the ethics accepted in the modern scientific world, the appearance of, in a sense, "ideal" people is only a matter of time.
In conclusion, it must be said that in his works, Philip Dick always spoke directly about the fact that the introduction of technology into human life should be treated with caution - largely precisely because of the loss of a sense of reality, which he himself was so afraid of and which he often experienced. Perhaps it is better not to ignore his warnings - he managed to predict too much with surprising accuracy.
Elizaveta Ivtushok