Like much of the class, I too enjoyed our discussion on Tuesday. I think that the most important lessons were that the Model Classroom is alive and that Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place would have lasted longer than four seasons if the pizza place was alive.
I like to approach books from a literary standpoint first. This is one of the reasons I really liked He, She and It and didn't find it at all uncomfortable. Though I was always aware that I was reading a book by "feminist author Marge Piercy," I was willing to accept her version of the world and I didn't at all mind what some of the class characterized as almost separatist feminism. I did think that Shira's Ari subplot was a little off-putting, which is why I was worried that I wouldn't like the book for the first few pages. I didn't want the book to turn into another Tom Jane comedy (Please, somebody get this reference).
We touched back on Mike from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but glossed over it so quickly that I think we created two classes of sentient computers: people and living machines. Heinlein wrote Moon without there being a question of Mike's being alive, but in He, She and It, we skipped the alive part and moved right to personhood. This brings us back around to the pizza place: is Malkah's house alive? A person? The "law" stated that no human-shaped cyborgs could exist, but not necessarily how smart they could be. The law seems to be more concerned with the practical aspects of having cyborgs infiltrating the multis for unknown ends, not the philosophical aspects of creating a person/human/future-crab.
And is this some weird offshoot of Clarke's Third Law? In fact, I'm coining it, right here. Even though I don't have a First and Second Law. DiPrima's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced AI is indistinguishable from a person." So, if we're talking .999999999..., aren't we just talking about 1.0? Well, not exactly, but we're a different form of giant computer, too. We're just squishier. So I guess we're all .999999999...
This is not turning out to be more focused than my original post. That's probably because I've been on a lot of cold medicine since Tuesday, though I'm now almost through the bloody thing. One last thought, though, on Blade Runner. First, Ridley Scott is the master of pacing a movie, perhaps in this one even more than in Alien. In case anyone missed the revised ending thing that wasn't in the original theatrical rape of the film, Castillo/Jaime Escalante/Adama leaves the unicorn to show that he knows Deckard's dreams - that Deckard is actually a Replicant. What's great is, the first time I saw the movie, I saw the theatrical cut that really gives no hint of Deckard being a Replicant. In contrast to He, She and It, Blade Runner's version of AI people is that they're organic, but not alive until they accumulate about four years' worth of experiences and develop their own emotions. How does this work into Yod, who's preprogrammed with emotions? Whose are they, anyway? Are they Tyrell's niece's? And does it matter, as long as you can still play the piano?
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This again asks the question, is the Model Classroom alive. There are a number of later Heinlein Novels where the quest for computer personhood is more directly addressed than in Moon. I am ultimately inclined favor a more inclusive view of personhood with the understanding that if we are wrong I would rather have granted rights to a bunch of appliances than kept them away from people
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