Literature Review:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick is a dystopian science fiction novel set in a post-apocalyptic future where Earth is devastated by nuclear war, and most of the population has emigrated to other planets. The story follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter tasked with “retiring” rogue androids that have escaped to Earth. The novel explores themes of empathy, identity, and the blurred line between humans and artificial beings. As Deckard hunts down the androids, he grapples with the ethical implications of his actions and questions the nature of humanity. The narrative dives into the psychological and philosophical aspects of what it means to be alive, raising profound questions about the essence of empathy and the consequences of technological advancements on the human experience.
A catastrophic world war has left Earth radioactive and barely habitable. Animal life has nearly been wiped out. To encourage people to move to other planets, the U.N. supplies each emigrant with a lifelike android servant. Most people have taken the offer, but a few remain on Earth. The “regulars” can marry and travel freely. The “specials” (people who are damaged by radiation) are not allowed to reproduce or to leave Earth. Ownership of an animal is a status symbol. Some people own real ones, but others have to settle for lifelike fakes. Both regulars and specials participate in a ritual called fusion, which involves “empathy boxes” and a mysterious figure named Mercer. Through fusion, people share in Mercer’s physical sufferings and also transmit feelings to one another. Those who come to the ritual happy leave sadder, weighed down by others’ burdens. Those who enter the ritual sad have their spirits boosted by others’ happiness. The beliefs and moral teachings associated with this practice are called Mercerism.
Out on the colony planets, life is much less pleasant than advertised back on Earth. The android servants find their existence especially bleak. Some of them murder their owners and escape back to Earth, where the androids try to pass for human beings. Police departments employ bounty hunters to hunt these androids down and kill them. Before killing an android, however, a bounty hunter must use a psychological test to confirm that the target is an android. The test is believed to be reliable, but with each new model, androids are getting harder and harder to distinguish from real people.
The idea that a machine could pass as a human by fooling us leads naturally to the suspicion that machines are capable of thinking. We’ve even begun talking about computers as though they have minds (e.g. “the computer is thinking.”) “Can machines think?”
In Philip K Dick’s novel “ Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” the line between human and machine is blurred as characters struggle to determine who is real and who is not. In many ways, this struggle mirrors the current debate around the rise of artificial intelligence (A.I.) and its potential impact on critical thinking.