Comments on: Canberra’s Blutibia

By: Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:00:30 +0000

Tsh and psh; not in the least bit foolish.

By: Harlequin

Harlequin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:27:18 +0000

And now I feel like a fool. Hell and damnation.

By: Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:14:14 +0000

You make good points ... I should perhaps have been clearer that both paragraphs in the last comment were quotations from PKD.

By: Harlequin

Harlequin — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:48:29 +0000

Is it fair to say that they produce realities? I think you need to be careful not to fall into semantic traps. No matter what is manufactured, it remains a construct - an entity that remains at the mercy of analysis. Analyse any human construct and it evidently falls short of the reality that it mimics - obviously, such analysis requires context to be communicated, but with such increases in communication (open to anyone, more or less), the context in which an entity exists is very easily informed. By which I mean, yes, pseudo-realities are being created - but the technologies that facilitate such creation also facilitate greater information needed to disprove those same pseudo-realities. News corporations cannot hide the truth of events when millions of voices can independently publish conflicting information elsewhere.

And if they can be disproved, why call them realities?

Your comment about the power of words is, however, undoubtedly true. Society is shaped by what concepts can be communicated, and such communication requires words. As the meaning changes, so does what can be said.

By: Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:05:52 +0000

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. Also: Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups...So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.

By: Harlequin

Harlequin — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:25:44 +0000

Bringing Philip K. Dick into it is pretty dangerous, Mr Roberts. Before you know it, you'll be wondering if this entire life is not simply a hallucination that you're having after taken Substance D in a hallucination created by overdosing on Substance M. It's a nightmare.

But regardless, congratulations on the continued praise that YBT is (rightfully) receiving.