Political scientist and sf fan Henry Farrell (previously)
argues persuasively that the dystopian elements of our everyday life
are best viewed through the lens of Philip K Dick (whose books
repeatedly depicted a world of constructed realities, whose true nature
was obscured by totalitarians, conspiracies, and broken computers) and
not Orwell or Huxley, whose computers and systems worked altogether too
well to be good parallels for today’s janky dystopia.
In the PKDverse, it’s increasingly hard to tell bots from humans (and
even the bots might struggle to tell whether they are or are not
artificial), and “centaurs” (human-machine collaborations) poison our
mediasphere with software agents
that periodically get puppeted by real-life trolls. These centaurs use
captured bits of human intelligence – Wikipedia scrapes, messages
harvested from social media – to impersonate humans when no human is
available to puppet them, but then summon human assistance when they
reach a crux that’s above their paygrade – a moment of truth when it is
possible to effect an epic troll, or complete the next phase of a giant
con.
These places are truly haunting and provide an incredible venue for urban exploration, atmospheric photography and, perhaps, even for a location or two for low-budget movies. These are just two of almost one hundred abandoned amusement parks across the world.
Spreepark PlanterWald is located in Berlin, Germany. When it opened in 1969 as Kulturpark Planterwald, it was the only entertainment park in Germany. Over time, the socialist and then private owners were left with too much unpaid debt. In 2001, the park was declared insolvent and closed its doors. One of the park owners, Norbert Witte, arranged to move some attractions across the ocean to Peru, where he moved with his family, and tried to open another Lunapark. When his venture failed there as well, he was caught smuggling cocaine, valued at $20 million, back to Germany inside the mast of one of the ships.
Koga Family Land Park can be found in the Shiga Prefecture of Japan. It seems to be completely swallowed by a lush forest, its past gloriously illustrated in children’s drawings, which now hang fading from the peeling walls - an echo of “family fun”. It was closed in 1988 and has become a haven for urban explorers.
Here’s a tip for the do-it-yourself crowd: Go to your computer’s Start menu, and either go to “run” or just search for “cmd.” Open it up, and type in “ping [website address],”
Once you have the IP for a website, all you really need to do is enter it like you would a normal URL nd hit enter/press go. Typing in “208.85.240.231” should bring you to the front page of AO3, for example, just as typing “174.121.194.34/dashboard” should bring you straight to your Tumblr dashboard. Since we’re obviously bracing for the worst case scenario which would involve you not being able to access the internet regularly, you should, save this list.
Dear Tumblr-ers, -ites, ettes, and whatever other things you may prefer,
Please reblog the crap out of this. Add to it if you feel there is stuff necessary but missing.
