Part 1: The Dark Enlightenment and the Digital Prison.
Platos cave is an allegory for the liberatory power of rationalism, however as history shows, rationalism isn’t always enough. Once rationalism fails, humanity regresses into what Nick Land calls a “dark enlightenment,” in which people revert to pre-rational mindsets. However, we can never really go back to the way we were in Platos Cave, and we enter novel forms of delusion. Philip K. Dick says we become trapped in the “iron prison” or rigid thought forms, however we are beyond even that - now we find ourselves more and more locked in the Digital Prison of an always online world.
Part 2: The Astral Flight Simulation
We trace the trajectory of several Science Fiction stories concerned with Artificial Intelligence antagonists, from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Neuromancer, Tron, and The Terminator, to The Matrix, Ex Machina, and God Shaped Hole. In so doing, we see how humanities will is superseded by that of technology, how like Faust we hand over our autonomy - our eternal souls - in exchange for the promise of technology, and are thereby locked in the digital prison. Once there we are in a new Platos cave, in which digital shadows play out on the walls, in a mimicry of the fulfillment of a religious or even a rational world.
If you like my discussion of digital age science fiction, I insist you read “God Shaped Hole” by Zero HP Lovecraft, found here.
https://zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/god-shaped-hole/
The Astral Flight Simulation