Pink Feather

I’ve been watching quite a lot of Japanese anime and science fiction films and series the past year or so. Many of them are futuristic, set in a world where humanity and computers have become somehow mixed.

Many will know of the films and series of Ghost in the Shell where some humans become cyborgs, they may have a computerised brain and/or changed their body parts to artificial limbs, some are even full cyborgs with no natural components at all. They are still humans, however, with human thoughts and feelings because they have what is a called a ‘ghost’, which is what makes you human. In the series there are also androids who are basically computers/robots who may look human or look more like robots, they do not have a ghost, and are thus not human (there are some exceptions, but I will not cover that here).

Battlestar Galactica is another well known series, this is American Sci-fi rather than Japanese anime. Here cyborgs are artificial, and they are developing rapidly and become more and more like humans, and in a way I guess you can say they do become humans. This is especially so because it appears some cyborgs can have cildren with humans, making their children part human and part cyborg (though which side is stronger in them, if there is a difference, I do not know).

Chobits is one of my favourite Japanese anime series (probably because of its girlyness), in this series persocoms have been developed, they are robots that (may) look human, but are really computers. Some are small and cute, and others are full sized adult bodies and do normal chores such as cooking and working. The story is about one of these persocoms of a very special kind, a chobit, one that actually has developed/programmed to have feelings and be more like humans, although she is not. It is really a lovestory between the chobit and her owner. However, the series takes up difficult issues such as the relationship between humans/humanity and the ever progressing technology, which may someday make such relationships possible. And this brings me to what this blog post is really about.

imagine living in a world where technology has developed so far that robots look like you and me, act very similar to you and me and do basically the same things as you and me. These themes are touched upon to some extent in all of the series I have mentioned above. What if we are actually able to construct these copies of humans?

Personally I find it very likely that the border between human and non-human will be breached to some degree. We already have some people forming relationships with realdolls, and all that is really required is to computerise them and make them able to move on their own (no easy task, I’m sure, but you get what I mean). If living, talking and active human dolls turn into a quite common phenomenon, would that have any effect on us as humans? Is it not possible that you could see men and women choosing to form relationships with these rather than finding a ‘real’ lifepartner? Imagine a boy/girlfriend or a husband/wife that you could programme to be the way you want him or her to be? You can decide his or hers ‘personality’ and in what ways he or she should react in given situations. If you tell them to do something they will do it without hesitation (unless you programmed them to, of course). Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?

Or is it really so? Imagine that your husband/wife leaves you because of a computerised humanlooking doll. I mean, it could maybe be possible to understand and accept someone leaving for another ‘real’ person who they felt was better for them. But a computer in a humanlooking body? I think many people would find that very hard to handle. Also, imagine yourself or someone you know marrying or having long-term committed relationships with one of them. Would that be socially acceptable? Unless the technology for it is invented (or even possible) these couples will not be able to have children in the natural way. That would result in more negative reproduction.

On a more in-depth note, I have my doubts on whether or not it would even be possible to have a long-term, meaningful relationship to someone who is not a real person, someone who is programmed to act in certain ways. Ultimately it will probably be impossible (as far as I know) to create computers so advanced that they will be able to communicate and understand human interaction to the level that we humans do. This means that the people opting for these relationships may be deprived of proper human contact.

I won’t go more in-depth of these questions today. They are topics I think a lot about, and I will return to the issues I have mentioned in more depth at a later date when I have thought some more about it. It is very intriguing however, and it will be interesting to see if I live to see some developments in this direction in my lifetime.