Philip Dick, Valis and the Internet

Hello there. Pink beam-inspired posts as from today, Januay first 2008. Happy new year to all of you.

A blog dedicated to Philip Kindred Dick and inspired by him. PKD is my favourite hero, almost a prophet. He was a visionary genius and I feel very empathic with him. He was exploring arts, phantasy and religion in a desperate, leonardesque sacrifice. He did it to find some kind of light out there. This is probably what keeps many of us alive and kickin'.




-VALIS ...Vast Active Living Intelligence System....: A perturbation in the reality field in which a spontaneuos self-monitoring negentropic vortex is formed, tending progressively to subsume and incorporate its environment into arrangements of information. Characterized by quasiconsciousness, purpose, intelligence, growth and an armillary coherence.
Great Soviet Dictionary Sixth Edition, 1992-
Philip Dick (1981) Valis

We are searching by the most powerful and exponential-evolving informational tools around, but the -unnamed- is still out there, hidden as it never was before. Is this the reason why we are getting depressed? Come on, Valis, is hatching! his juvenile name is "Internet".

Let's see:

Valis is:

living system & perturbation in the reality field

described as

1. negentropic vortex
spontaneous
self-monitoring

2. subsuming and incorporating its environment into arrangements of information

characterized by:

- quasiconsciousness
- purpose
- intelligence
- growth
- armillary coherence (this is a bit obscure for me: armillary might mean ring-like coherence, from the latin "armilla":ring)


If you consider the evolutionary path of internet, and try to project its near-future shape, you might notice at least few common points between VALIS and the internet.

A question arising is: is internet a self-monitoring living system?

Cheers!