Johnson: Blade Runner

  
     One of the biggest concepts in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner is technology becoming so advanced, that we can no longer tell the difference between human and android. And the biggest question that is posed in the movie, is what happens once we cant tell the difference? W.A. Senior asks in his article "Blade Runner and Cyberpunk Visions of Humanity," "what does it mean to be human? - what are the boundaries of humanity? - how human or humane are humans? - and when androids and humans meet, how can one tell them apart?" These are all valid questions for an uncertain future. Ridley Scott seems to believe that humans will treat Replicants just the same as humans treated slaves or animals; as insignificant sub-humans. In Blade Runner, human beings own humanity is questioned, because they feel no remorse for "retiring" Replicants - beings that look, sound, and act just like humans.
     There is a message in the movie, that makes the viewer think of the Civil Rights era, and the struggle for blacks to be treated equally as their white peers. Deckard even explains to the audience in a scene where his police captain refers to Replicants as "skin jobs," that the captain is the type of man who used to call blacks niggers. It seems as though Scott believes once technology is at the level where you can no longer tell the difference between human and android, there really is no difference. If they talk like us, act like us, think like us, and bleed like us, then they are no different than us in Ridley Scott's mind.
     Back in 1982, when this film was being made, the idea of technology becoming advanced enough to mimic human beings was far out. But now in 2010, the idea is not so crazy anymore. The Blade Runner story is becoming more real every day. Soon we will have Replicants fighting our wars, washing our dishes, and driving our children to school. How will humans react to this? How will technology react to this? Will androids evolve and begin to think for themselves? Will humans have to worry about technology taking them over?
     There is a film coming out called "Transcendent Man" that asks, and tries to answer a lot of these same questions. The film focuses on the highly provacative author and inventor Ray Kurzweil, who says that "once we get to the 2030's, we will not be able to tell a clear difference between human and machine intelligence." His ideas are very intriguing and scary, but are very relevant to the Blade Runner idea. Kurzweil believes that the pace of technology and information is accelerating so fast, that humans will eventually have to merge with technology to remain productive. He calls this idea of human/android bonding "Singularity." I believe Kurzweil, but there are a lot of people who do not. I guarantee they will be the ones who will want to kill ("retire") all the Replicants.