Two years ago, I posted that my old pal Rodney Ascher, director of fantastically freaky documentaries like Room 237, about weird theories surrounding The Shining, and The Nightmare, a study on sleep paralysis, was embarking on a new documentary project about people who believe that we're living in a simulation. At Rodney's request, I invited any Boing Boing readers who are convinced that our world is a digital creation to get in touch with him. Some of you did! After rave reviews at Sundance, the film is available as of today for streaming on iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, and Google Play!
Here's what BB pal Erik Davis, who is seen in the film, had to say about it in his Burning Shore e-newsletter:
The movie, which has just opened for general release, explores the simulation hypothesis, the probabalistic cyberpunk reboot of the ancient intuition that life is a dream. Ascher traces the idea that we live in a CG sim through PKD's Valis experiences, the Matrix movies, video games, and the philosophical arguments of Nick Bostrom, who appears as a somehow spooky talking head. Cartoonist Chris Ware and writer Emily Pothast also dropped some incisive words[…]
But we were just the support crew. Ascher centers his story on "eyewitnesses": individuals, some of whom admit they may be suffering from mental illness, who experience the ordinary world as a simulation, with glitches and NPCs and too-perfect synchronicities[…]
I told Rodney that Glitch was a proper mindfuck, which he accepted, rightly, as the highest of complements.
