Uncanny Grieving

Reflecting back on the episode "Be Right Back" and our class discussion, I believe that Martha's way of coping with Ash's death was completely unhealthy. Unlike a picture or a video which capture the person as they are truly remembered to be, Ash 2 was only a formulated version of the person that Ash 1 portrayed to be on social media. I understand that this type of technology may be new and not in our reach for understanding, but nevertheless Martha was not actually coping with Ash's death but just replacing him with this man-made version of him. Time after time, Martha became frustrated with Ash 2's lack of imperfections that Ash 1 had and that is the reason that she decided to detach from him in the end. The thing that she really needed was for Ash 2 to do things that weren't perfected to please her. Even though Ash 2 did learn along the way, it was and never will be the same as Ash 1 because of the lack of memories and history between the two. Again, the only thing Ash 2 really knew was what was on social media and what Martha told him to do. Eventually a person would get tired of having to remind them of their true loved one and in the end she did. I think that this type of technology would be useful in the future for other jobs, but for situations like this, it is unhealthy and prevents the person from carrying on with their life. It will never be close enough to the true person. In my opinion, it is just better to grieve and move on whilst still remembering the person as their true self. Ash 2 is a completely different person than Ash 1 and will continue to be less and less like Ash 1 if Martha allowed him to live with her instead of the attic. New memories would be made and though Ash 2 was founded on Ash 1's social media information and anything else that could be collected from the internet, it would eventually find its own identity through its own experiences with Martha. It would just be a painful journey of the robot/cyborg starting out kind of close to the person, learning new things along the way, and then never being good enough to replace or formulate the true person that was missed and eventually the difference between the two become more drastic as time goes on. There will always be something missing and that would just make the griever go crazy no matter how much info is collected and how much is taught.