It’s always struck me as a bit odd how much anxiety concerning government or “Big Brother” intrusion goes around these days. Certainly there have been some very bad and some very totalitarian governments in the past—their existence led to World War II, after all—and I suppose the U.S. may be headed in that direction in some areas, but I’ve never been able to get all that scared about it. The film “Sophie Scholl” is a good depiction of how such governments can lead to martyrdoms for the cause of freedom, but it’s intriguing how the protagonist in that film never lost her sense of justice and self-assurance, even in the face of oppression. There are some things the state cannot steal from us, and peace of mind should be one of them.

The remaining communist countries are forces to be reckoned with, and I think the Internet censorship in China, for example, is inexcusable. Our ever-expanding technological creativity is leading to ever-new ways to lose one’s privacy, but I think that may be more of a shame than a threat. People should have the right to lead quiet, unintruded lives. At least we should have the right to bear arms against those who would force us into their tyranny of the public domain—though what arms can you raise against hackers and spammers? The ancient world, save for a few preserved gems, is lost to us in a sea of anonymity, but our era may be preserved forever for future generations in zeroes and ones. When the angel opens the Book of Judgment on the last day, all he’ll really need is a web browser.

Still, I think that there is a certain peace of spirit that we ought not to allow them to take from us. That screen shot from the trailer says it all: a mind trapped in anxiety that may or may not have any real basis, and which is impossible to escape. Our minds can be worse prisons than any database.

Okay, here’s some other PKD stories that have ended up as movies…

Total Recall (We Can Remember It For You Wholesale)
Screamers (Second Variety)
Bladerunner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep)
Paycheck
Minority Report
Imposter

Any more??

Nick, PKD is also very occupied with the question of “What is REAL.”

*mwah*
~Britt

It is interesting that some of Dick’s novels present the creepy side of totalitarian government (Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly), so I think that distrust of government institutions is probably what links him to Rand. In both Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly, the authorities are the All Seeing Eye. When they come for you, it is because you *are* guilty. There is no assumption of innocence.