The Future of Androids and Their Humanity
By Nicole Brault
It’s always a bizarre experience to be dropped into the middle of an ongoing story. I looked up the actual term for this literary device: in media res. I have always been partial to stories that utilize this device because it feels much more realistic. In the real world, you are not always notified when you’re at the beginning of a significant event in your life, and this narrative device feels as if the character is talking to you in a much more personal fashion, taking the time to relay their life’s story to you. You are left to piece together the current narrative, wondering which bits of information are actually relevant to what you are witnessing, and what is merely trivia for avid fans. I have never watched Star Trek before, but I have obviously heard of it, what with its continued relevance to popular culture even today. I was surprised by how many characters are present in Star Trek- I thought the Enterprise was a small ship that tended to go rogue, rather than a massive military undertaking populated by hundreds of workers. The constant sacrifice of characters of the week makes much more sense now that I know that the writers had an unending supply of fresh blood. There’s even a term for this in popular culture: red shirts. Wearing this costume denotes a character as being disposable, as it became apparent over the show’s run that new characters wearing this outfit were much more likely to die on the Enterprise’s perilous missions rather than the actually important main characters. This writing system raises the stakes for the beloved characters, further engaging the viewers, while simultaneously extending the show’s running period indefinitely.
It was kind of funny to watch a trial determining a beloved character’s humanity take place in a small room with only a couple of people in the room. An incredibly grandiose, philosophical debate is taking place, with dire consequences for Commander Data on the line, and it’s taking place in what appears to be a tiny storage room of the ship.
Over the weekend, I watched the movie On the Basis of Sex, which provided me with a foundation of understanding legal precedent and what exactly Captain Picard is attempting to establish by categorizing Data, an android, as a new race. From my incredibly rudimentary understanding of law, everything is based on precedent. In order to further social justice movements, lawyers have to rest their cases on prior instances of mercy and judgements of humanity. If there is at least one case future androids can reference that determined their humanity in a court of law, their safety in further cases will be much more certain.