Reading Robert Heinlein's novel Friday we're not only shown a wondrous future for he world that includes "bean poles" or elevators to space, even just to drop people back down on another continent. Typical with most of Heinlein's work he also includes non-nuclear families and smaller, more locally controlled governments. What is unique to this novel is the main heroine, Friday, and her struggle with being an "Artificial Person" or "AP."
Yet, to maintain control and supremacy over the androids in this world, the manufacturer includes a short lifespan. These androids may become quite close to fully human, but theirs shall remain but a spark. Except, perhaps, for at least one android we meet.
As much as I love the film, it is a different story entirely from the novel upon which it is based. Essentially, we're treated to two separate examinations of the question "What does it mean to be human?" Philip K. Dick presents a world that while distopian, is also far more sad and abandoned than the one presented in Blade Runner. Here we find an Earth abandoned and destroyed, likely as a result of atomic war. Most humans have fled to colonies beyond the atmosphere. Those that remain attempt to keep the "kipple" or detritus of an abandoned world at bay.
Social status is now signaled by maintaining a pet, and since so few real animals exist, many folks keep android animals including the bounty hunter main character Rick Deckard. Living in such a desolate world requires some to use mood enhancing machines, which almost seem addictive in the case of Rick's wife. Her emotional instability provides a constant source of tension in the novel.
The most disturbing scenes in the novel arise not from some large tragedy, but small instances of indifference to life. Juxtaposed to those like Rick Deckard and the animal android mechanic, who cherish life, even that of androids, we also witness those that do not care for the precious little bit of life left on the planet including the rebel androids. A pivotal scene shows the sadness and discomfort of John Isidore as the rebellious androids torture a real spider nonchalantly. Their ruthless disregard of the spider's life and life in general clashes with Rick Deckard's empathy toward an escaped android turned opera singer. Ultimately we find humanity in those that value life both lived by mechanical beings and organic ones.
"The electrical things have their lives too, paltry as those lives are". - Rick Deckard
Philip K. Dick explained in an interview that his inspiration for the anroids, particularly the rebellious ones that torture the spider, were the Nazi work camp guards. He wondered how a person can show so little empathy. By using Deckard and Isidore, two characters of disparate levels of intelligence, to embody empathy and humanity, we find Philip K. Dick did not believe mental prowess necessary to be human. And perhaps through the doomed opera singer he even argues an android may possess humanity.
As genetic engineering and artificial intelligence continues to progress, how will we continue to define artificial and what parameters will be set for being human?
Welcome to Night Vale's recent episode includes a speech by the mayor Dana, that welcomes a sentient, intelligent being to be recognized as a "person." In this particular case, a literal five-headed dragon.
Fiction gives us the freedom to muse and persuade and develop ideas about person-hood, humanity, and empathy. However, our own natural history demonstarates that we humans do not play nice with other intelligent species. We homo sapiens are the last hominid, ehrm, standing, and likely because we either out-competed and/or killed the other hominid species. Not a great track record for accepting a new, not yet discovered intelligent species. Hopefully, with all the Sci-Fi helping us imagine genial relationships with a new life-form we just might play nice in the future.
When I first read this book as a teenager in the early 2000s, I kept waiting to learn if Friday was a mutant or an Android. I'd already seen the Science Fiction classic Blade Runner. You can imagine my surprise to learn the character identified as an "AP" because her first cells split inside a petri dish. She otherwise developed in-utero and grew as all humans grow. I'm pretty sure I went to school with at least one "petri dish baby" and never did I consider or believe anyone else to consider them a lesser person. Heinlein's idea of artificial person in this 1983 novel seemed odd to me nearly twenty years after it was written and even stranger now, thirty years since he penned it given the frequency of pre-natal genetic testing and gene therapy. The idea of genetically engineering a person to be extremely athletic, intelligent, and beautiful does not fall under the current definition of "artificial," but instead a new term seen most frequently with food: Genetically Modified. However, no one argues that the genetically modified corn is not actually corn.
That fantastic Sci-Fi classic mentioned earlier, Blade Runner, touches on another aspect of the question about real life vs artificial life. In the film we're faced with the very real humanity of the androids with perhaps the best improvised line ever:
Yet, to maintain control and supremacy over the androids in this world, the manufacturer includes a short lifespan. These androids may become quite close to fully human, but theirs shall remain but a spark. Except, perhaps, for at least one android we meet.
As much as I love the film, it is a different story entirely from the novel upon which it is based. Essentially, we're treated to two separate examinations of the question "What does it mean to be human?" Philip K. Dick presents a world that while distopian, is also far more sad and abandoned than the one presented in Blade Runner. Here we find an Earth abandoned and destroyed, likely as a result of atomic war. Most humans have fled to colonies beyond the atmosphere. Those that remain attempt to keep the "kipple" or detritus of an abandoned world at bay.
Social status is now signaled by maintaining a pet, and since so few real animals exist, many folks keep android animals including the bounty hunter main character Rick Deckard. Living in such a desolate world requires some to use mood enhancing machines, which almost seem addictive in the case of Rick's wife. Her emotional instability provides a constant source of tension in the novel.
The most disturbing scenes in the novel arise not from some large tragedy, but small instances of indifference to life. Juxtaposed to those like Rick Deckard and the animal android mechanic, who cherish life, even that of androids, we also witness those that do not care for the precious little bit of life left on the planet including the rebel androids. A pivotal scene shows the sadness and discomfort of John Isidore as the rebellious androids torture a real spider nonchalantly. Their ruthless disregard of the spider's life and life in general clashes with Rick Deckard's empathy toward an escaped android turned opera singer. Ultimately we find humanity in those that value life both lived by mechanical beings and organic ones.
"The electrical things have their lives too, paltry as those lives are". - Rick Deckard
Philip K. Dick explained in an interview that his inspiration for the anroids, particularly the rebellious ones that torture the spider, were the Nazi work camp guards. He wondered how a person can show so little empathy. By using Deckard and Isidore, two characters of disparate levels of intelligence, to embody empathy and humanity, we find Philip K. Dick did not believe mental prowess necessary to be human. And perhaps through the doomed opera singer he even argues an android may possess humanity.
As genetic engineering and artificial intelligence continues to progress, how will we continue to define artificial and what parameters will be set for being human?
Welcome to Night Vale's recent episode includes a speech by the mayor Dana, that welcomes a sentient, intelligent being to be recognized as a "person." In this particular case, a literal five-headed dragon.
Fiction gives us the freedom to muse and persuade and develop ideas about person-hood, humanity, and empathy. However, our own natural history demonstarates that we humans do not play nice with other intelligent species. We homo sapiens are the last hominid, ehrm, standing, and likely because we either out-competed and/or killed the other hominid species. Not a great track record for accepting a new, not yet discovered intelligent species. Hopefully, with all the Sci-Fi helping us imagine genial relationships with a new life-form we just might play nice in the future.
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