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"If I can make you see the world the way I see it, then you will automatically think the way I think."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Composite Person | ||
| A synthesis of basic personalities. |
This is perhaps the earliest example of what might be called a "virtual person", although it is not created digitally.
| “Yancy is a synthesis,” Sipling explained. “A sort of composite person. No such individual actually exists. We drew on basic prototypes from sociological records; we based the gestalt on various typical persons. So it’s true to life. But we stripped off what we didn’t want and intensified what we did want.” Broodingly, he added: “There could be a Yancy. There are a lot of Yancy-like people. In fact, that’s the problem..."
We’ve been conditioning the public for eleven straight years. The important thing is the unvarying monotony of it. A whole generation is growing up looking to Yancy for an answer to everything.” “It’s a big business, then,” Taverner observed. “This project of creating and maintaining Yancy.” “Thousands of people are involved in just writing the material. You only saw the first stage — and it goes into every city. Tapes, films, books, magazines, posters, pamphlets, dramatic visual and audio shows, plants in the newspapers, sound trucks, kids’ comic strips, word-of-mouth report, elaborate ads . . . the works. A steady stream of Yancy.” Picking up a magazine from the coffee table he indicated the lead article. “ ‘How is John Yancy’s Heart?’ Raises the question of what would we do without Yancy? Next week, an article on Yancy’s stomach.” Acidly, Sipling finished: “We know a million approaches. We turn it out of every pore. We’re called yance-men; it’s a new art-form.”
 ('The Mold of Yancy' by Philip K. Dick) ...In nine years I’ve come to see the essential key to the Yancy character . . . the key to the new type of person we’re growing, here. It’s simple. It’s the element that makes that person malleable enough to be led around.” “I’ll bite,” Taverner said patiently, hoping the line to Washington was good and clear. “All Yancy’s beliefs are insipid. The key is thinness. Every part of his ideology is diluted : nothing excessive. We’ve come as close as possible to no beliefs . . . you’ve noticed that. Wherever possible we’ve cancelled attitudes out, left the person a-political. Without a viewpoint.” ...In every respect, our rule is: Yancy believes the least troublesome possibility. The most shallow. The simple, effortless view, the view that fails to go deep enough to stir any real thought.” |
| Technovelgy from The Mold of Yancy,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Worlds of IF in 1955 Additional resources -
|
More details:
“This is for next Sunday morning,” Babson explained.
Yancy’s lips moved, and he spoke. “Friends,” he began, in his deep, personal, friendly, man-to-man voice, “I’ve been sitting here at my desk — well, about the way you’re sitting around your living rooms.”
But the viewer was left with the illusion of having consumed a rich and varied intellectual feast. It was amazing. And it was professional: the ends were tied up too slickly to be mere accident...
Nobody was as harmless and vapid as John Edward Yancy. He was just too damn good to be true...
This is the final effect:
The gestalt began in the regular way. There was no doubt about it: when Sipling wanted to, he could put together a good slice. And in this case he had done practically the whole pie.
In rolled-up shirt sleeves and dirt-stained trousers, Yancy crouched in his garden, a trowel in one hand, straw hat pulled down over his eyes, grinning into the warm glare of the sun. It was so real that Taverner could hardly believe no such person existed. But he had watched Sipling’s sub-crews laboriously and expertly constructing the thing from the ground up.
Compare to Adam Selene from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert Heinlein, the personality simulator from True Names (1981) by Vernor Vinge, the Composite Expert System from Twenty Evocations (1984) by Bruce Sterling,
Idoru from Idoru (1996) by William Gibson, and
synthespian from Nestor Sextone for President (1988) by Jeff Kleiser.
Inside, a screening of a recent Yancy gestalt was in progress. A group of yance-men watched it silently, faces alert and critical. The gestalt showed Yancy sitting at his old-fashioned oak desk, in his study. It was obvious that he had been working on some philosophical thoughts: spread out over the desk were books and papers. On Yancy’s face was a thoughtful expression; he sat with his hand against his forehead, features screwed up into a solemn study of concentration.
At a nearby street comer, a group of people had collected around a public vid-screen. Anticipating the late-afternoon t-v cast of John Edward Yancy,
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'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
