What is free will? If we were forced to, or programmed to have free will, would it really be “free”? What are memories? Are memories proof of our existence, our reality, or are they merely tokens of places, people, situations and things that may or may not have existed. Is an android (a synthetic human) programmed to have free will and to have memories any less human than the real thing? After all, aren’t we all to some extent created humanoids with “pre-programmed” brains and inner workings all for the purpose of exploring our own free will and memories? These are the questions asked in Philip K. Dick's remarkable book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Philip K. Dick was a man whose personal life was far more fantastic than any sci-fi story ever written, even that of his own writing. D.A.D.O.E.S was written in 1968 and marked a dramatic turn in his writing. His books, although science fiction in genre, began to take an almost autobiographical approach when dealing with the narrative and character. Towards the end of his writing career Dick became extremely paranoid, and rightly so. Two times his house was broken into and important manuscripts and personal journals were stolen and burned. He began to believe he was under surveillance from some secret underground Government organization. He also began to have extreme psychological delusions, believing that he was “contacted by a pink light” from God, and instantly knew everything there was to know about every thing (written about in his Divine Invasion trilogy).
Dick also began to suspect that he might not be the real Philip K. Dick, but a clone or android, and that the world he lived in was nothing but a projected hallucination being created by the non-defunct Roman Empire and that the world we live in is a fake one created by Satan to deceive mankind. Dick was most definitely libertarian in his world-views, but also knew that mankind in general lacked the necessary responsibility to be completely trusted - and therefore neither was the Government to be trusted.
The world envisioned in the book is dark and bleak, but not without it’s hopes and dreams. Through the technological undertakings of mankind and large corporations, the planet has become over-populated, leaving no room for expansion or, for that matter, nature itself. Animals, well real ones anyway, are extinct, and now companies like the Tyrell Corp. manufacture fake “replicants” for consumers to purchase. Along with the animals, they also create androids. The Nexus-6 model Android is completely life-like, and even has memories and free will programmed into them. They are so life-like that even they sometimes forget, or never even knew, that they are\were not human.
But what is a “true human”? What do we consider the criteria that makes a human being a human being? A soul? Can we prove a soul exists? What about memories? Can we prove that they really happened? Might we be an android programmed to think and believe that we are the real thing? Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter hired to “retire” (not “kill”), begins to ask himself these very questions. If one has the belief that he is real, well then does that not make him real? If one is programmed with the expected behaviors of society, programmed to obey and follow the norms laid down by society, then really one has just skipped the learning phase of life and already knows what is to be expected. Does this make said person any less human? And what of the values or goals? We think as humans that what separates us from the rest of the world, both natural and technological, is our ability to discern right from wrong, good from bad, desirable and undesirable behavior. But what if a machine was programmed or “taught” to learn this system of agreements - then what would separate us from the rest of the world?
If in a libertarian world, free will is the most important aspect, who would decide what constitutes free will? In D.A.D.O.E.S it is the Corporations who now play god. Through the rise of their power given to them by an unaware, uneducated society, the Corporations have dictated what is to be expected, what the beliefs should be and ultimately what is true or real. They are both conservative and socialistic in their approach. They feel that they must create and lay down the system of agreements for society, so much so that they create perfectly synthetic humans, and believe that through their actions, mankind will ultimately benefit.
Rick Deckard ultimately begins to question his own reality. Is anything real? Is his very life any more valid than that of an android? Is his seemingly “free will” really that “free” when it can be so easily reproduced by technology? These questions may never be answered. And so like much of his work, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ultimately asks more questions than it answers, but such is the nature of well written science fiction – to use the future and the fantastic to ask questions about present day situations.
