Reader response for activity 1

Part 1. Identify three technologies mentioned in Blade Runner and the ends for which they are meant to provide.

- Androids: Designed to be used as servants for people who had emmigrated off world. Doing tasks, providing protection etc..

- Empathy Box: A device whose explicit purpose is not yet clear but allows for humans to combine conciousness with other humans, has given rise to a religeon called Mercerism wherein people collectively share the strugges of a man named wilbur mercer

- Voight Kampff test: a verbal test to be used alongside a machine which guages a person's emotional reaction to various situations, particularly those concerning animals. Used to detect who is not a human.

Part 2.

What greater social effects do/might these technologies have? Why do you think so?

I'll go over each of these technologies in turn.

- Androids serve as a slave race which is used to serve those who live offworld from those on earth. Although they are meant to be machines, the Rosen corporation has made great strides in increasing the mental capacity of these machines to increible levels. To the point where these machines have their own sense of self and their own sense of goals. This has allowed them to gain some sort of sentience and brings forward a consequence where the now self-aware androids would seek their own freedom. Many of them fleeing to a world where humans have mostly abbandoned: Earth. This has given led to the rise of Bounty Hunters who have a task of finding and 'Retiring' these androids. 

- The empathy box has deeply affected society by allowing all followers of Mercerism to experience the views and life of a man named Wilbur Mercer. As Mercer was a person who had a strong sense of empathy and a great value in life, his presence and his life being shared with so many has profoundly infused society with a sense of respect for natural life. All followers of Mercerism are expected to follow along with the sensations felt in the merging with the empathy box, and feel united as a race. All followers are also expected to take care of an animal, to nurture life on earth, despite how futile it may be in this broken world. I think this is the case particularly because the real goal of the empathy box is somehow controlling the users of the box, using the most human trait that there is. If the empathy box was something devised after WWT and after the mass emmigration of the 'regulars' then it would stand to reason that they would like to return to earth someday, perhaps by using such a machine with the populace they are able to convince those 'specials' to be working towards rebuilding a habitable earth for the regular's eventual return.

- The Voight Kampff test has been used as the definitive way to detect who is an android, including even those of the Nexus Six series. The test has pretty much shaped the laws of the society as it allows the bounty hunters to retire at will, any persons who fail the test, much of society's faith in Bounty hunters and the law is a result of faith in this test. To be perfectly, honest I don't think the presence of this test or even the androids have a huge impact overall on society on earth as a whole. It's of extreme importance to members of a certain dangerous vocation, and to those industrialists off-world yet it's effect on the day-to-day of the specials of earth is quite limited. The reason is that Androids simply aren't a huge nuisance in the world. They hide away and try to be as well hidden as possible so not to attact the attention of bounty hunters to them. For the most part in this day and age, androids are dealt with silently and discreetly by bounty hunters so that the average joe wont really engage with them if ever.

other observations not part of this assignment
I suspect the test itself is actually not that accurate. Though it is described as recording physiological reactions to social situations, it actually is more accurately described as a measure of response to situations regarding animals. In the world that is portrayed in the book it would seem that there are no Humans that do not have a strong affinity for natural life. Yet it seems hypocritical that humans have a strong disdain for non-natural life such as the androids. This hypocrisy is fettered throughout the story. People disdain androids to the point where it is shoot on sight if they are confirmed to be one, yet if even one real person is killed as a result of an improper test, then the whole test itself is expected to be resigned. People are expected to take care of all natural life yet they will gladly abbandon other humans who are considered inferior to the wasteland that earth has become. Perhaps the so-called 'regulars' that are actually sent up to mars really are a different kind of people that have a much greater lack of empathy for other humans, yet use empathy as a way to subjugate the 'specials' of earth. Allowing the specials of earth to care for natural life to a fault, while preventing them from ever feeling empathy towards machines which have so evidentally found their own claim to life just as strong as their own.