In the Black Mirror presentation on the dynamic between Ash, both the original and the android, with Martha, there is a clear distinction between what makes these relationships unique, and what makes Martha's desire to have Ash to remain in her life even after his death so powerful. One could attribute this desire to love, Martha's affection for the late Ash is what causes her the most amount of internal debate during her time dealing with his eventual robotic replication, her panicked rant about the base disrespect of his death regarding the simple chat program that mimics him seems a far cry from her raising a child with the mechanical entity in her life later. But I think Martha's attachment is not at a personal level, else she would never have been able to cope with a simple mimicry of her late significant other, but rather the more peak, flawless features of having someone there that returned her affections. Her early dismissals of the second Ash follow the patterns of her disapproval regarding the first: namely, distractions or barriers that separated Ash from her. I think Martha is afraid that the new Ash will follow the old's path, and garner too much new personality, causing her even more terror that she may have to lose Ash, even if it is a new form, all over again. Her disarray at dropping the phone whilst chatting with his early program proves a reliance on Ash's real presence.
Our discussion regarding what it means to be "human", having personality as only a human can, involved a comparison that listed Ash 2 as a simple copy of the original being, Ash Starmer. Whilst I concur with the fact that the android is indeed only a copy of information that the human Ash placed on social media, I also think there is a case to be made that the android is also truly Ash. Whilst the information may have been cherry-picked from the sources available, that information was all as much a part of the original Ash as what was not shown, deduced by whatever program runs the android through what Martha tells it. In this fashion, the robot begins to pursue objectives of its own in in achieving the task of becoming as much of Ash Starmer as he was in life, whilst also gaining new traits unique to the experience after the "original's" demise. Ash 2 is not a perfect copy, nor a clone, he is a reflection of an Ash that never was, never will be, but through contradiction exists within the form of Ash 2.
2 comments:
I think its interesting how you make a distinction between clones and copies. Really made me think.
This was really interesting especially since I haven't thought much on this subject. I like your position that, despite having aspects of the old Ash, Ash 2.0 filled the missing aspects with his own experieneces, growing into his own person.
Post a Comment