Cinematic Toys

Robocop vs. Terminator, originally uploaded by Thorsten Becker.

26 And God went on to say: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every moving animal that is moving upon the earth.” 27 And God proceeded to create the man in his image, in God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26,27

Since the dawn of time mankind has pondered its place in the universe, its beginnings, its purpose, its future. As a Christian I believe in the above quoted text but the point of this post is not to debate religious believes and scientific points of view. The point is that people have always tried to create things in their image as well. From statues to dolls to modern day machines we have been fascinated and emanated with our own image – our bodily existence as well as our mental and spiritual capacities. We have either given images a pretend life, as in bowing down to representations of deities, or we have tried to give them actual life through mechanical means. And as unfeasible and unnecessary as many engineers make a human form machine out to be, in many cases justified, the pursuit to create in our own image continues. It is more than just a technical endeavor, it is an innate drive within us to understand our own humanity better. We will not stop until we have created something living in our image, something that is not us but very much like us. The question at that point though would be what its purpose is.

We all must admit that we are imperfect (which begs the question why). There are many different interpretations of imperfection and to me it is not simply the inability to make right decisions at any given time. I personally subscribe to the definition of imperfection as the inclination towards negative and injurious things. Instead of thinking of the best possible solution that is the most beneficial to us and everyone affected by us we tend to act selfish and self centered and often rash and without proper contemplation. Ergo perfection would mean the exact opposite.

Taking the above into consideration, if we are the mold after which we furnish something in our image how would it react given the opportunity to gain self awareness and a sense of being? What if it was superior in strength, what if it would lack the empathic abilities that make us human? Science Fiction has pondered this issue on many occasions, most with the conclusion that we’d either destroy our creation or that it would destroy us. How about the question though how these creations, these images, would interact with each other? Would they equally turn on each other as we turn on us? Would they do so in a matter of protecting us from themselves – or each other from their own kind? Can an imperfect creature like us ever create something that could potentially be better than itself or would it always be doomed to ultimate failure?