["Vulcan," a computer that controls everything in PKD's 1960 novel
Vulcan's Hammer, begins demanding more information because it doesn't understand how humans are behaving. Vulcan speaks:]
A significant shift in the orientation of certain social strata which cannot be explained in terms of data already available to me. A re-alignment of the social pyramid is forming in response to historic-dynamic factors unfamiliar to me. I must know more if I am to deal with this.
A decided bifurcation of society seems in the making.
I sense a rapidly approaching crisis. Ideological. A new orientation appears to be on the verge of verbalization. A Gestalt derived from the experience of the lowest classes. Reflecting their dissatisfaction.
Essentially, the masses reject the concept of stability. In the main, those without sufficient property to be firmly rooted are more concerned with gain than with security. To them, society is an arena of adventure. A structure in which they hope to rise to a superior power status.
A rationally controlled, stable society such as ours defeats their desires. In a rapidly altering, unstable society the lowest classes would stand a good chance of seizing power. Basically, the lowest classes are adventurers, conceiving life as a gamble, a game rather than a task, with social power as the stakes.
The dissatisfaction of the masses is not based on economic deprivation but on a sense of ineffectuality. Not an increased standard of living, but more social power, is their fundamental goal. Because of their emotional orientation, they arise and act when a powerful leader-figure can coordinate them into a functioning unit rather than a chaotic mass of unformed elements.
-- Philip K. Dick. Vulcan's Hammer (novel, 1960).
Chapter 7.