Featured Reading / Pages 228
Philip K. Dick
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
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| Rethinking California | ||
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Featured Reading / Pages 228 |
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The Gold Coast
The great gridlock of light.
Tungsten, neon, sodium, mercury, halogen, xenon.
At ground level, square grids of orange sodium streetlights.
All kinds of things burn.
Mercury vapor lamps: blue crystals over the freeways, the condos, the parking lots.
Eyezapping xenon, glaring on the malls, the stadium, Disneyland.
Great halogen lighthouse beams from the airport, snapping around the sky.
An ambulance light, pulsing red below.
Ceaseless succession, redgreenyellow, redgreenyellow.
Headlights and taillights, red and white blood cells, pushed through a leukemic body of light.
There’s a brake light in your brain.
A billion lights. (Ten million people.) How many kilowatts per hour?
Grid laid over grid, from the mountains to the sea. A billion lights.
—Kim Stanley Robinson, describing Southern
California in 2027, from The Gold Coast (New York:
Tom Doherty Associates, 1988)
The Golden State has lost a little of its luster. Rebounding from recession, political turmoil, an energy crisis, and crippling deficits, California finds itself at a crossroads. This raises the prospects for government to draw upon its resources to find solutions to current problems and to fend off the next wave of crises. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger came into office as a reform-minded activist, riding a wave of voter discontent with the state’s fiscal problems and partisan bickering in Sacramento, but he failed to deliver the change he promised. Unable to solve the state’s financial problems by working with the legislature, Schwarzenegger hoped the voters would approve five initiatives to help balance the state budget in 2009. They didn’t.
The day after voters rejected those measures, Michael Hiltzik noted in The Los Angeles Times that the governor began in 2003 with popular support that “would have allowed him to tell the voters the harsh but necessary truths about California governance and force real reforms.” Instead, Hiltzik wrote, “he uttered the same lies about state government and proposed the same nostrums as many of his predecessors,” including the notion that the budget could be balanced by trimming waste, fraud and abuse. In fact, Schwarzenegger’s decision to cut the vehicle registration tax by $2.3 billion per year caused much of the state’s financial woes. The challenge for the next generation of leaders, according to Hiltzik, is to prove that California is not “ungovernable” as is commonly said, just that it’s been “ungoverned.” Real reform, he insisted, would require removing legislative term limits, revising Proposition 13, and changing the two-thirds legislative requirement to pass a budget.1
Reversing California’s problems will require more than a few ballot initiatives and handshakes in a gubernatorial smoking tent; it will require commitments from California’s people and institutions to chart a different future. The choices they make today will determine the quality of life for future generations of Californians. To get a sense of where those choices might bring us, it is instructive to look back at the consequences of the choices made a generation ago.
In 1971, a group of business leaders, environmentalists, and elected officials published a pamphlet that served up two contrasting visions of California’s future. The pamphlet, titled The California Tomorrow Plan, quickly attracted the attention of planners and officials around the state and the nation. The plan identified a list of urgent problems facing the state in 1971, a time and place dubbed by the authors as “California Zero.” They argued that each of these problems, ranging from preservation of agricultural land to civil unrest, was rooted in four dysfunctional public policy issues arrangements that needed to be addressed: (1) a lack of individual political strength, (2) a lack of individual economic strength, (3) a damaging population distribution, and (4) a damaging pattern of resource consumption.2 California’s social and economic viability would be determined, according to the report, by the willingness of policymakers to act in these four areas during the next three decades (1970–2000).
The plan offered two scenarios projecting what California might be like in the twenty-first century. “California One” was a nightmarish scenario that the authors predicted would emerge after 30 years of policies that encouraged unrestrained economic growth. In California One, increased urbanization led to massive sprawl and environmental destruction. These problems were exacerbated by governmental policies that subsidized certain economic enterprises while only sporadically enforcing control regulations. In California One, the state budget reflected separate programs of several single-purpose agencies. Because the budgeting and accounting process was not designed to make full assessments of various policy alternatives, the costs of planning and coordination were overstated. Quality of life in California was severely impaired as growth continued unabated. Sprawling cities joined with one another, devouring open space in between. Air pollution increased, despite tougher air quality standards, as more automobiles appeared on the new freeways and roads that connected the proliferating suburbs. Several species, including the remaining salmon population, were lost due to habitat destruction. The state’s national parks became severely congested. There was high crime punctuated by occasional periods of civil unrest, encouraging the affluent to seek refuge in the security of private, gated communities. In other words, California One was the logical consequence of three decades of development, while clinging to 1970 methods of solving problems.
“California Two” was an alternative scenario of the state at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which would come into existence if policymakers followed the authors’ proposed path. In contrast with California One, quality of life was much better in this near-utopian vision of the twenty-first century. Coordination replaced governmental fragmentation, and the piecemeal policymaking practices of the past were overcome through rational planning. In this vision, agricultural and open space were preserved, as growth was carefully managed and confined to urban boundaries. Energy-efficient mass transit systems moved people within and between urban centers, and wilderness areas and recreational space remained intact. Looking back after three decades, many of the proposals seemed to reveal a pre-Proposition 13 innocence. Roughly formed illustrations of high-speed bullet trains and monorails showed people zipping between urban centers surrounded by open space. Aggressive landscaping transformed inner-city streets into gardens and downtown areas into pedestrian plazas containing schools and cafes.
Even if the authors’ unabashed optimism about the capacity of government to improve California’s quality of life seems naive by today’s standards, the accuracy of their forecast is chilling. Their recommendations went unrealized, and their warnings of what the state would become have largely materialized. Californians now face several choices about how the state will be governed and how it will grow over the course of another generation. The example of The California Tomorrow Plan hints at the long-term repercussions of choices made or not made.
Philip Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? portrays a nightmarish world in mid-2021, where androids have been employed as slaves on outlying planets, and police assassins search the earth to retire trespassers.3 The tension between the real and the artificial allows Dick to tease out a logical twenty-first century conclusion to late twentieth century social dysfunction. Set in San Francisco, the book envisions a society where electronic replicas of pets are affordable alternatives to the extremely rare, and extremely expensive, animals themselves. Androids are indistinguishable from humans, both in form and biology, though they differ in emotional capacity. Police powers include summary execution, and due process is reduced to a questionable series of test questions.
The Ridley Scott film Blade Runner adapts the Dick novel, placing it in Los Angeles. The film’s prologue grimly lays the framework:
Early in the 21st Century, the Tyrell Corporation advanced Robot evolution into the Nexus phase—a being virtually identical to a human—known as a Replicant.
The Nexus 6 Replicants were superior in strength and agility, and at least equal in intelligence, to the genetic engineers who created them.
Replicants were used Off-world as slave labor, in the hazardous exploration and colonization of other planets.
After a bloody mutiny by a Nexus 6 combat team in an Off-world colony, Replicants were declared illegal on earth—under penalty of death.
Special police squads—Blade Runner Units—had orders to shoot to kill, upon detection, any trespassing Replicant.
This was not called execution.
It was called retirement.4
That Philip Dick’s imagined twenty-first century California will actually come into being is unlikely. However, several key issues remain a contested terrain, leaving open several plausible outcomes. Novelist Kim Stanley Robinson examines California’s future through three starkly different views of the mid-twenty-first century. One vision, The Wild Shore, presents a California in 2047 amid the ashes of nuclear war where daily survival is a battle and within which the blurred distinctions between good and evil are constant morality plays.5 Alternately, Pacific Edge envisions an ecotopia in 2065, where harmony and sustainability are in tension with resurgent greed and exploitation.6 Finally, and perhaps most salient among the trilogy, Gold Coast predicts 2027 suburban sprawl run amok.7
The Blade Runner metaphor suggests that social evils have become so severe that extraordinary police powers are necessary and appropriate. The Wild Shore metaphor suggests that human or natural disasters may usher in a period of moral ambivalence. We should not assume that such extraordinary events are necessarily futuristic—we have seen such historical examples as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Cold War paranoia and Red scare, periodic civil unrest, earthquakes, floods, and fires. The question, ultimately, is of choices made well in advance of the mid-twenty-first century. With this in mind, our current arc of progress is far more likely to arrive at a Gold Coast-like scenario then any of the others: “grid laid over grid, from the mountains to the sea. A billion lights.”8
When looking into the face of the twenty-first century, several choices appear. Not surprisingly, they exist within current policy areas: environment, immigration, education, and civil rights. Environmental degradation is perhaps our most immediate concern, particularly when we include land use, congestion, and urban sprawl. As the state approaches 35 million people, we still insist on land-intensive suburban development. The consequences are severe: continuing reliance on single occupant vehicles, with the associated congestion and poor air quality; less and less open space; and greater pressure to develop adjacent to public parks, ridgelines, and the few miles of pristine coastline left.
As California continues to be a gateway for immigration, there is serious potential for greater demonization of new Californians. Anthropologist Fred Krissman9 observes that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have historically provided the next generation of citizens. Yet we provide these new Californians with a civic education grounded in xenophobia and intolerance. Public education will continue to be a contested terrain, particularly as we demand more while providing fewer resources. The civil rights discourse will continue to evolve, as we redefine the notions of inclusion and equity to incorporate the many challenges of twenty-first century statehood. While these pressures will continue to grow, we would be wise to remember Pogo’s admonishment: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
“California Two” may yet be possible. The choices discussed throughout this book demand the participation of all stakeholders. The only truism that applies to California’s future is, simply, that in a democracy we get the policies we deserve. Greater participation may lead to better choices. This book has explored California politics and policy from a historical, social, and cultural perspective, in an effort to provide a foundation for understanding policy and politics in the Golden State. The rest is up to you.
| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? | Philip K. Dick |
The small beam of white light shone steadily into the left eye of Rachel Rosen, and against her cheek the wire-mesh disk adhered. She seemed calm.
Seated where he could catch the readings on the two gauges of the Voigt- Kampff testing apparatus, Rick Deckard said, “I’m going to outline a number of social situations. You are to express your reaction to each as quickly as possible. You will be timed, of course.”
“And of course,” Rachel said distantly, “my verbal responses won’t count. It’s solely the eye-muscle and capillary reaction that you’ll use as indices. But, I’ll answer; I want to go through this and—” She broke off, “Go ahead, Mr. Deckard.”
Rick, selecting question three, said, “You are given a calf-skin wallet on your birthday.” Both gauges immediately registered past the green and onto the red; the needles swung violently and then subsided.
“I wouldn’t accept it,” Rachel said. “Also I’d report the person to the police.”
After making a jot of notation Rick continued, turning to the eighth question of the Voigt-Kampff profile scale. “You have a little boy and he shows you his butterfly collection, including his killing jar.”
“I’d take him to the doctor.” Rachel’s voice was low, but firm. Again, the twin gauges registered, but this time not so far. He made a note of that, too.
“You’re sitting watching TV,” he continued, “and suddenly you discover a wasp crawling on your wrist.”
Rachel said, “I’d kill it.” The gauges, this time, registered almost nothing: only a feeble and momentary tremor. He noted that and hunted cautiously for the next question.
“In a magazine you come across a full-page color picture of a nude girl.” He paused.
“Is this testing whether I’m an android,” Rachel asked tartly, “or whether I’m homosexual?” The gauges did not register.
He continued, “Your husband likes the picture.” Still the gauges failed to indicate a reaction. “The girl,” he added, “is lying face down on a large and beautiful bearskin rug.” The gauges remained inert, and he said to himself, An android response. Failing to detect the major element, the dead animal pelt. Her—its— mind is concentrating on other factors. “Your husband hangs the picture up on the wall of his study,” he finished, and this time the needles moved.
Source: Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Copyright © 1968 by Philip K. Dick. Reprinted by permission of Ballantine Books, a Division of Random House, Inc.
1. Michael Hiltzik, “Schwarzenegger Missed His Golden Opportunity to Give Californians the Truth,” Los Angeles Times (May 21, 2009): A1.
2. The report was later published in book form as Alfred Heller, ed., The California Tomorrow Plan: The Future Is Now (Los Altos, CA: William Kaufmann, 1972).
3. Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968).
4. Prologue from the Ridley Scott film Blade Runner.
5. Kim Stanley Robinson, The Wild Shore (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, Inc., 1984).
6. Kim Stanley Robinson, Pacific Edge (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, Inc., 1988).
7. Kim Stanley Robinson, The Gold Coast (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, Inc., 1988).
8. Ibid.
9. Fred Krissman, “Undocumented Mexicans in California: Disenfranchising Some of Our Best and Brightest 21st Century Citizens.” Center for Southern California Studies, Working Papers series, #4. (California State University, Northridge, 2001).