Week 4: Bladerunner.

This week I had the task of watching Ridley Scott's 1982 film Bladerunner for the first time. This movie is considered a classic of the cyberpunk genre and encompasses all the elements cyberpunk is about. Bladerunner is set in a world on the brink of failure, technology is advanced but in many ways it's cost the world its humanity. Humans have invented humanoid robots called Replicants, they are virtually indistinguishable from real humans but are lacking human emotions. These Replicants are essentially used as slaves, carrying out the dangerous, dirty jobs that humans deem below them, and after 4 years they are disposed of like rubbish. This idea brings up the discussion of the ethical responsibilities in the fields of technology and science. In this film they  created a race of faux-humans, superior in strength, gave them memories to make them feel human and then told them they didn't have the same rights as real humans. Obviously this was never going to end well. This movie of course is technically fiction but in the real world there is already considerable work that has been done in brain-machine interfaces, mixing the human body with technology. So far the progress made has generally been for therapeutic purposes, to help blind people see and amputees regain limbs but when these have been mastered will enhancement of the human body and its capabilities be the next agenda? If we start using technology to give certain people advantages over others it could easily take a turn for the dangerous. If the military could give their troops a physical advantage over other countries this would lead to retaliation through even more advancements. In summary the development of brain-machine interfaces without extensive ethical consideration is an incredibly risky path to take, and if left in the hands of a half-mad megalomaniac we could be left with a bit of a Bladerunner situation on our hands.

Peterson, Gregory 2005, Imaging God: Cyborgs, Brain-Machine Interfaces, and a More Human Future, A Journal of Theology Dialogue, Volume 44, Issue 4, p 337-346.

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