Topic 10 - Blade Runner

Lecture

In the this week we watched the movie Blade Runner. The film is set in the future, centres around the story of the human race on other planets creating another species of themselves, called replicates whose sole purpose is to be enslaved by those who made them. Typically, as always with these sorts of stories, the replicates rebel against the humans, using their own technology against them and the humans then have to fight them off and defend themselves against their own creations. The story sends a clear message; that in such a technologically advanced world, it is possible to have consequences and basically have our own creations slap us in the face. To rely too much on technology, is to possibly give away everything we have worked for and that advances in technology do not necessarily suggest positive influences.

Readings

The reading this week was called An Exploration of What It Means to be Human by T.J LeGrice. It's talks about the 1968 novel by Phillip K. Dick called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? The novel was later released as Blade Runner. The article dicusses the Voight-Kampff machine that features in his novel and in the movie Blade Runner, which measures a persons emotions and emotional capabilities and is able to detect whether a th subject is a real person or a replicant. The article offers an explanation as to what a 'Blade Runner is': human (a) 1: of or relating to people or humankind, 2: having the nature, qualities or characteristics of people or humankind and 3: of or relating to humankind as distinct from God or gods, animals or machines.

The article also goes on to compare androids and humans, and while humans acquire all the above qualities, androids only strive to and that is the biggest difference. You cannot build or invent human nature, it is innate. And no matter how advance technology will become, those human qualities can not be faked.

Tutorial

There was no set activity this week, we did more planning for our essay's.