Jim Fehlinger wrote:
>
> Jeff Davis wrote:
> >
> > "These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise...to seek out evil
> > genetic enhancement and (no doubt) slap it around some thus proving, amidst
> > much spouting off about it, the moral and practical superiority of natural
> > and unenhanced humanity."
> >
> > Hollywood can just suck sometimes.
>
> There's always been a strain of this in _Trek_,
They've always touted an anti-capitalism, anti-western, anti-tech
theology:
Ferengi - derived from an arabic word synonymous with 'disgusting
infidel moneychanger'.
Q - Poster child for leftist distrust of unrestrained individual liberty
and technological development.
Borg - are depicted to look like undead ghouls, although the Voyager
positive depiction of Seven of Nine, who has retained many borg
technologies does offset this a bit, but only because she does emphasize
the individual as superior to the collective, which does show that all
hope is not lost on ST.
While the idea of collective minds through the forced assimilation of
individuals is abhorrent to me, it seems that the Borg concept was
created specifically to demonize implantation, nanotech, and other
bootstrapping technologies as evil.
Also on Voyager, the race that was giving the Borg a run for its money,
which held the ethic of 'evolve or perish' were also depicted as a
seriously malignant species.
>
> And wasn't there an episode of _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_ that
> revealed that Dr. Julian Bashear owed his obnoxiously high IQ to
> illegal (in the Federation) genetic manipulation, and that he lied
> about it to get into Star Fleet?
>
> Of course, we've also had _Star Trek: The Next Generation_'s
> Lt. Commander Data, friendly AI and Pinocchio wannabe, whose
> freedom as a sentient being was defended in Star Fleet court by
> Captain Picard when a representative of the Daystrom Institute
> wanted to claim him as government property.
Of course, he was a good AI because he believed in his own inferiority
compared to natural humans, just as capitalists like Ben & Jerry, etc
are 'good' capitalists because they buy into propaganda that demonizes
capitalism.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:39 MDT