Essay

Artificial Love

>Rough Draft Essay

December 6, 2004

There is something that separates the living from the dead; and, a dividing line between organic artificial life and real life. The theme of love is played throughout Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (by Philip K. Dick). In his story, Dick strings the idea of love through the interactions of the book's characters. This allows readers to familiarize with the emotional and physical attractions that exist between humans and androids. The usage of technology and artificial things has been labeled potentially dangerous (a theme found in many science fiction stories); Dick’s vision allows its readers to compare how humans relate now and could relate to the development in technology and the future. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Dick shares a glimpse into an outcome possible if this world continues to imitate perfection, how the emotions and relationships between beings could deteriorate into something meaningless or even deemed illegal.

In the future, humans will make robots, androids assembled from flesh and bone. The mentality of these androids will become more intellectually complex than those of humans. Fear will strike, and these creations will be thus banned from the planet completely. The perfection of the female android causes the immoral and unintentional seduction that lures mankind into a spell of the desire of something fake. This bond is forbidden, an aspect that only makes such affairs more tempting. In their higher state of minds these powerful female androids are able to manipulate most men from simple chickenheads like J.R. Isadore to the great Rick Deckard.

Today, technology serves a very important role in the economy and everyday lifestyles for much of the human race. The development of computers could become so intricate that it poses as a global hazard. Exiling these godforsaken robots off of the planet will only temporarily solve the problem; Dick proposes that the freedom of opportunity on earth will attract the android race to migrate illegally and live secret lives among humans.

Rachel Rosens’ tempting passes at Deckard and Pris’ steady control over J.R. Isadore, all prove the potential danger of artificial life that could take effect on a person. The strive for perfection with technology, aiming to simplify and make the human lifestyle more convenient, could lead the world to its own doom. The banned “love” between a man and his robot, which he chooses over a real female being, will be a part of a network of illegal coupling of man and android and tear apart the natural connection, production and traditional lifestyle that involving the human-with-human relationship. The love is lost. Empathy becomes one sided. Feelings are unreal. Perfection supports desire to take the lead and leave behind what was once real love, dissolving and fading away in the past.