Happy New Year 2015. If you are a science fiction fan or si-fi nerd you would be aware that this is the year Replicants human manufactured to work in harsh Off-World colonies escaped their slavery and returned to their Eden (Earth) to exact retribution, revenge and to learn from their Maker about their Expiration dates. I am of course referring to the movie Blade Runner - first picture below (stars Harrison Ford, directed by Ridley Scott), which as based on a novel (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) by Philip K. Dick (PKD). Dick is a german surname so it is only funny if you are have a somewhat juvenile sense of humor and appreciate dick jokes. The Android in the title of this book does not refer to Google Android OS for mobile phones. An android is an artificial humanoid form machine. In this story artificial intelligence (AI) is as normal as the Operating Systems (OS) which run our computers and mobile phones. We do not right now 2015 have any sort of artificial intelligence. AI is a large subject but suffice to say one test for a machine/OS as intelligent as human beings is: if we can converse with it and feel the responses are indistinguishable from what you might get from an actual human then it is an AI. In Blade Runner, androids are indistinguishable visually, mentally and physically (unless they use their superhuman android abilities) and are illegal to locate themselves on Earth. the penalty for this is called (forced) retirement, in other words switched off involuntarily without any retrenchment (trench as a hole in the ground) benefits with extreme violent prejudice. The question is if the machine can feel emotions, or ACT AS IF if they have fear, hatred, jealousy, and love are they still machines? i capitalize ACT AS IF because are we not acting with our feelings? where do our feelings come from? Our brains? hormones? If the android has a brain and hormones and feelings are they any different? And what the Blade Runners Nexus-6 androids fear most is their own expiration dates - which have been fixed at manufacture. Some people also think our expiration dates are also set at manufacture. What do you say about that? PKD is an unusual writer and as a si-fi writer was and still is a giant. Over 10 of his books and short stories were and will be adapted for films. this alone is not a mark of greatness or giantness, it is the subject matters which he explores in his works that bring the questions on philosophy, morality, reality to the si-fi genre which usually deals with science and technology and alien beings and worlds. Films such as the even more well known Total Recall (stars Arnold Schwarzenegger) based on We Can Remember It for You Wholesale - where he asked us to consider : What is Real? What if technology can implant false memories so real you cannot tell what is real and what was manufactured. This is not strange or far-out science fiction if you think so because if you try this little thought experiment you will realize most of not all our memories are reconstructed automatically when we think about remembering. Some details will be added and a lot will be forgotten. Think about a significant event that you experienced a few months ago. the movie ends without any solid answers - is this really real or just a dream? Minority Report (stars Tom Cruise) is based on a short story of the same title The Minority Report) which asks us to grapple with the big question of Prevention of major crimes, such as murder, before the actual crime has taken place. Meaning to say are you guilty of a crime you might be only thinking of committing and be penalized for thinking? Perhaps PKD is asking is it right and/or lawful to prosecute thinking itself as a crime? Incarcerated for Thought Crimes? isnt this like fascist regimes from decades before and even now that spies on its citizen for what they defined as (thought) thinking crimes? if you are not even free to think of anything are you a free human being?
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:52:42 +0000