Oops I missed the D.B.D.S.U. one week anniversary. My bad. I heard there was free pizza… Since the last time I checked in, I got this weird text-wrapping issue on the site, but it only appears in my browser for some reason… Idk… On to stuff I’m thinking about…
Science fiction is a cool genre because it is so reflective of common thoughts for the time. You can learn so much about a period by looking not just at its contemporary media, but its predictive media. It feels the pulse on the people and speculates based on it.
Some of my favorite sci-fi comes from the Y2K era and relates to early internet paranoia. The Matrix, Serial Experiments Lain, Pulse (2001), and Perfect Blue are all examples. In order to spawn this media (and much more) the vibes of the time must’ve been very tense, but I can imagine their paranoia being considered unfounded by netizens. Did the premise of The Matrix seem as dumb to people in 1999 as movies about existential threats of A.I. seem now?
As an aside, I don’t buy the idea that artificial intelligence will take over the world. There are plenty of issues with A.I. which shouldn’t be ignored (generative A.I. especially), but world domination isn’t one of them. Things like being struck by lightning or getting hit by a boulder are scarier to me. Yowch!
Who knows, in twenty years we may find that A.I. fears were totally prescient. Or, what’s more likely, is that some things will be prescient, and some won’t. Sure, just like in The Matrix, the internet has become a second, idealized world that’s hard to escape. However, it isn’t manufactured by robot overlords, instilling complacency, but corporate overlords instead. Likewise, A.I. may be a big part of our future, but in different ways than those we imagine today.
It's oh so interesting to look back on the aforementioned stuff and see how ahead of its time it was. If you ask me, though, what’s more impressive is how it predicted the overwhelming feelings the internet inspires. SEL and Perfect Blue are great examples with their surreal, anxious atmospheres. Both of them are about how the internet, (or personas, in Perfect Blue’s case) can change reality. Things get distorted, twisted, as the second world becomes entwined with the real world. Who's the real Lain? The real Mima? The real you?
This is your reminder to get some off-the-computer time today. Go read a book or feed a bird or something. That’s your D.B.D.S.U. homework. Also, watch Pulse. The 2001 one.