There are androids who simply serve their masters on Mars. But the ones who have escaped to Earth obviously want to be free; this suggest they are not just drones. They dream of something better. While they don't care about what happens to other androids, some of them felt despair at learning they were in fact androids.
My question is: How can this kind of being come about in the real world? I suppose scientists could clone humans and take out some empathy gene, but the lack of empathy seems to be a mere side effect. It seems like they built android brains, which were circuit boxes, and surrounded them with real skin and hair. If this does eventually happen, I wonder if androids would develop dreams and wants. Their electric brains could conceivably become complex enough to function as a human brain (if that whole Singularity nonsense is true), so the world Dick created might be more accurate than we think. If so, we are going to face moral issues more unclear than any we have faced before.
Interesting observations of the book you read. I think I should read it now. It is somewhat frightening or uncertain to think about what will happen when human life and technology will merge. Will the results be destructive when we find out we are machines? Or will life go on? We'll have to wait and find out, if in fact this fiction does become fact.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your points for sure, however I am slightly confused as how this relates to our class discussions. Was this your personal reading book or did I miss something? I am very interested in hearing more of your insight about this though (:
ReplyDeleteYou raise some interesting questions there Adam. You asked about removing an empathy gene. Well, if all that 'singularity nonsense is true' (hah), then that means we will have advanced to a point where we have remapped the human brain and developed the technology to recreate it. To remove empathy they'd have to somehow slightly alter the pre-frontal and pre-motor cortices of the brain without inhibiting other functions. Anyway, you've definitely sparked my interest in this book, and I may well read it when I get the chance!
ReplyDelete@SAM
ReplyDeleteto answer your question sam, the androids are infact still an stifical intelligence unit that is based off of hardware the "human" component about them is simply for the power supply effectivly allowing them to consume materials like a normal man or woman would. as it is AI insted of a matix system (assuming you are familliar with the terms) the android would have to develop "emotions" on its own which is the reason the corperation gives them a limited lifespan of four years.
@rileyalyssa
yes it is in fact a book we are reading for the class
@cdestcroix
its Sam you are adressing haha. not Adam although he is also readind the same book.