I read Counter Clock World by Philip K Dick long back. But recently I made a visit to it. The thing that I deduced from it was quite a surprise and I could then see what great vision he had of a future society. Despite the fact that his story is based in a future time and is about time reversal, there are two things which really struck me were unique and that made me connect it to today’s times.

The first and foremost thing. Liberary is the most powerful body in the world. What Philip K Dick saw coming was the fact that infomation about everyhing in the world is the key to world domination. Liberary is so powerful that it can track people’s where abouts, trace their calls , and eventually topple the governments. Though they are not the actual rulers, they still hold all the power. People come to liberary to “Search” information. Now does that ring a bell ? PKD has always, critcized or rather shown his displeasure towards a centralized authority system also technically known as a “Totalian Society”.

The second and also something that has been there since ages but really took an ugly turn in the late 80s, 90s and 2000s, is Religion. The book talks about a Religion called Udi, which is on the lines of spirituality and god as an entity of the universe. However, it loses it’s direction and ends up dividing the society and the country into different parts. The founder of Religion is old-born (Due to the time reversal in the book) and when he comes to life, he realizes, the religion he founded has lost it’s direction and purpose.

Both the concepts are pretty futuristic to the time the book was written in 1967. There was no google or internet but envisioned the information to flow freely and extremely fast in the futuristic world. Aren’t both the concepts so true in today’s world ? Google and Web in general is a single point of authority that controls most of our life and religions, aren’t they rotting the world and themselves anyway ?