After reading these stories, I was surprised at how the androids were portrayed. In most of the movies I’ve seen so far, the main issue has been that these androids are very similar to humans, so much so that they have their own consciousness and feelings. However, in all these stories, the androids were portrayed in an opposite way, with them being cold and unfeeling.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep did confuse me a bit, however what struck me was the emphasis on empathy being used to determine whether one is human or not. I feel that not all humans are emphatic at the same level or to the same things. The whole test was based upon their reactions to animals used as trophies and such, which kind of makes sense given how rare the animals are. But, that shouldn’t be the only basis of determination as it leads to a biased result.

Reading this also got me thinking about how much our reactions have to do with our experiences. But, if an Android was given fake memories, shouldn’t their reactions portray that? A main thing that I found very interesting was how the characters throughout the story questioned their own humanity. This got me thinking, that if an Android does have fake memories, but believes them to be true, then doesn’t that make it a human? We are a collection of our memories and experiences, but what happens when we find out memories aren’t real but were planted there?

These readings also built upon what we discussed in class for the last module on how humans like being the superior being. Even though we may create something that is smarter or stronger than us, we still want to have a fail-safe to make sure we still have a way to control our creations. We like knowing that we are on top of the food chain.