Happy midterm week!

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was honestly my favorite book that we’re read so far. One of the most important things I’ve noticed is how the book, although futuristic, still reflects the times it was written in. For example, the secretary in the phonebook still uses a phonebook to look up people’s numbers. People carry around catalogues that are mailed to them. There are no computers anywhere, or any invention like it. Perhaps it could refer to them living on dystopian Earth with a fraction of the population, but it seems like, although they have androids which are startlingly difficult to tell apart from humans, people are still using some of the same technologies from the 1960s.

Many of their inventions seems to be based more in neuroscience. Creating new brains for androids, having tests for empathy, and the Penfield mood organ controlling your emotions and desires. However, although the book still has a dated feel, there are a few inventions that seem like a precursor to our own world. Videophones, for example, are standard across the Earth, and hovercars seem to be the type of car everyone drives around, even those on the lowest rung in society.

But another element stuck out to me as part of the 1960s culture, which was the gender dynamics. Most women, in this case, are in the home, and the book makes several references to wives “of course” being at the house. There are also ideas of love for women or women androids simply being about sex.

Overall, the book challenged my perception of what acting human was, and what experiences define our humanity. Is the android opera singer any less human than a real one? Are androids escaping to Earth for a better life not one of the most human things you can do?