For how long has been man trying to achieve this feat; creating artificial life is an endless quest that humanity has been undergoing since the dawn of time, but dealing with that “product” is not an emotionless process. From alchemical transmutation ages ago, to modern-day Asian robotics, creating an artificial humans, and lifeforms has been the target for many scientists, alchemists, designers, roboticists and engineers. In the olden days, they would follow the more logical process and try to create artificial life from scratch, meaning that would start as a child and would grow. This could be seen in the myth of Golem, the scientist guy who hated and wanted to eradicate women from the face of the earth, and thus wanted to create life, without our help, and other I do not recall at the moment. However, that would, of course, be a disaster, nowadays. Why?

Oh, the children, the children, THE CHILDREN! The image of purity, the epitome of candour and ALL that is good and well! Blimey, I call SHADE! Children are human, born as a seed for BOTH good and evil, it all depends on which they nurture, the good seed or the evil one! But, how can they be considered as the bodies or the vessels of artificial lives of what might be the undoing of us all, of the termination of humanity, according to the West, of course!

Creating artificial life is a multi-dimensional process with many layers and aspects that are not necessarily quantified. On the other side of the world, you have the Japanese embracing human-looking robots and treating them like humans, or like they have a kokoro. You can also see how the Koreans have created a child-looking, companion robot, called Liku, that will be available to be purchased soon by the masses.

Liku has her own emotions, reacts to people, her surroundings, and has her own Instagram page. Liku has a soul, Liku has kokoro, and it would be a pleasant change to treat robots like that, even if they have the physique or the looks of a hume child.

Oooh, the Scantily-clad, the super mad and always ready to attack! With power coursing through their veins and having the ability to crush any opponent with just a glimpse, they are still portrayed as hyper-sexual little nymphs! No representation, whatsoever either! Here’s a list of 100+ cyborgs, androids and robots in anime and cartoons. It’s mostly … See for yourself!

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/profile/fred9101/lists/female-cyborgs-robots-and-androids/17127/

I want some chunky mama cyborg to go and save the day with a “cool as a cucumber” attitude and fantastical body enhancement, that make HER the epitome of human kind, not some random buff guy!

But, it doesn’t matter what they say, because fans will always be ogling their bodies anyways, and female cyborgs are commodified and are sold as a product to the masses and are used to “service the fans” to milk them as much as possible and squeeze out the last penny out of their pockets, and that of course is through larger “breast enhancements” and scantier bikinis, of course, not “X-ray vision” or “super stamina or speed” or God forbid “technomorph”, which by the way is super cool and means a cyborg  can assimilate technology with their own body to either repair themselves, gain knowledge, or gain a new ability. Awesome, huh!? BUT, of course, that’s strictly held for the men, so yeah.. Till when will we accept females being adorned in almost nothing freezing their assets off out in the cold, wasting their energy and power regulating their body temperature instead of fighting off crime using super awesome powers that their MALE counterparts are readily handed on golden plates whilst the ladies just pose in the background looking gorgeous and deadly? They obviously do the dirty work in the end, because they ARE that good! Wonder Woman, anyone? Anywho.. I mean cybernetics was supposed to level out the field and give us leverage and have us both start from the same point, since we both rise from the same power level, YET HERE WE ARE, ONCE AGAIN! Why do they still keep getting favored!? I am still confused, and honestly a bit furious!

I am sure a lot of you has heard some K-POP on the local radio (Nile FM), since they have become such a trend and Asians, especially Far East Asians, especially Koreans and the Japanese are known to utilize sci-fi aesthetics, cyber punk and technological elements into their BOOMING creative industries, and especially into their music, either through their concept and art direction, music/sounds/audio, or music videos, or their costumes and makeup. There are a multitude of K-pop music videos that include elements of science fiction, whether it’s a dystopian plot, a cameo by an extraterrestrial being, or just a futuristic set to dance in front of. But only a few MVs have gone above and beyond with the sci-fi, taking this theme to the next level. We’re talking romances with robots, laser fights on foreign planets, and technological fantasy worlds.However, this blog post, I’ll be talking mainly about the outward, shallower aspect of K-POP, and that’s the MVs not the concept. WJSN’s music video for “Secret” embraces space travel as its main theme with a brilliant warm-hued palette that appeals to the viewers.

There’s also XIA – Flower, where a combination of various sci-fi elements is done an especially aesthetic combination where XIA sits atop a throne in a fantastical palace, surrounded by whimsically-clothed attendants. From the decapitated robot head to the electric blue liquid XIA spits up, the MV is rife with symbolism, lending itself to a multitude of interpretations and theories. Where the man of flesh defeats man of steel in a battle of wits and power, truly an interesting and aesthetically-tingling watch. Which begs the question of how the Koreans who should have more of a Buddhist background based on their proximity to the Japanese, and their religious, social and political culture should be more biased to their understanding of how everything should have a soul, including robots, and thus robots should be considered more of a friendly entity and not a foe. This shows how Americanized they have become, and just shows that they’re just slanted-eyed, shorter, fairer, dark-haired Americans living in the Far-East.

Another MV is this one by ToppDogg where they got creative with elaborate holographic screens in their MV for “TOPDOG.” No one really got what they were doing with all their gadgets but that’s part of it and that’s what we touched upon in the Walkman essay, people really didn’t know how to market for it. But it looked cool, and that how it sold itself! Technology!

There’s also speculations of technologies that might occur like changing outfits with a press of a button! BOYS24 brought together a variety of sci-fi elements for this fun futuristic set. Plus they’re all wired into the cloud, so that they are basically never dead, which speaks of issues like immortality and the digital fountain -or cloud- of youth. However, they are all stuck in this immortal cube/chamber/fountain/cloud for eternity and this is the price to pay. Mwahahaha.

He relinquishes one freedom in exchange for another.

Humans experience life through a range of senses and feelings. Sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell have the ability to translate external stimuli to internal feelings, and add them to other already existing internal existing internal hibernating feelings. These senses and feelings not only guide us through our life, but also link and connect us to specific places and moments within it. Feelings can be exhilarating, they can be beautiful, they can be amazing, but alas, they can also be quite painful. There has been a lot a talk in the discourse of “What’s Next in the Technological Field?” and Pain Inhibitors are on that list. It’s not something new, it’s like a super upgraded version of Operant Conditioning, which is a learning process through which the strength of a behavior is modified by reinforcement or punishment and is administered by therapists usually to soldiers before they go to war. It is also a procedure that is used to bring about such learning, and it is used to prevent, or at least to decrease the chance or the effects of PTSD. But, what about those Pain Inhibitors mentioned earlier, what might they be exactly? Well, they are exactly what they sound like; total pain suppressors, so that when you are hurt, you do not feel any pain at all, total loss of the pain sensory receptors, even if someone gets shot, they continue fighting as if nothing happens. They are nanobots that are injected within your bloodstream and reach within your entire nervous system and can thus affect your entire body and control your pain receptors and affect how you feel pain. But then you have super soldiers that do not feel pain, but do they feel other things? In the anime, they didn’t get PTSD and they only got triggered by a certain language trigger, the “genocidal organ” but that’s beyond the point. Does this mean, that we must feel pain to be human? Is pain what makes us us? Is the ability to relish feelings and feel pain what constitutes our soul? So, if we use these nanobots to work better, then we lose our humanity and become more mechanical?

These pain-inhibiting nanobots were featured amongst other things like liquid reality-
augmenting lenses and gunning biodegradable aero-flesh pods amongst other futuristic extrapolations, imaginations and machinations of the near future in the anime, which is based on a novel, Genocidal Organ written by Project Itoh. You can read the plot down below if you are interested, and I’ll also attach the trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KDYEjGecZc

Genocidal Organ – Project Itoh

“The war on terror exploded, literally, the day Sarajevo was destroyed by a homemade nuclear device. The leading democracies transformed into total surveillance states, and the developing world has drowned under a wave of genocides. The mysterious American John Paul seems to be behind the collapse of the world system, and it’s up to intelligence agent Clavis Shepherd to track John Paul across the wreckage of civilizations, and to find the true heart of darkness—a genocidal organ.”

“The war on terror exploded, literally, the day Sarajevo was destroyed by a homemade nuclear device. The leading democracies transformed into total surveillance states, and the developing world has drowned under a wave of genocides. The mysterious American John Paul seems to be behind the collapse of the world system, and it’s up to intelligence agent Clavis Shepherd to track John Paul across the wreckage of civilizations, and to find the true heart of darkness—a genocidal organ.”

Drone Intimacy  is such a poetic name and it did not disappoint! I am a big fan of cyberculture  and you can understand that if you read my piece on my relationship with a piece of technology (MY LAPTOP, OF COURSE) and from my intimate and what I believe is truly real and although intangible but I feel it, I do truly believe there’s an entire universe out there where we can float and fly behind that little magical screen. My laptop is truly a sultry little enchantress now isn’t she. However, not everything is magical, there’s always a dark side of the moon, and in this case, enter the screen assassins; drones. Drones aren’t just about the obvious evil which is the most evil sin which is obviously killing, it’s about the more “grotesque” or “morally-wrong fetishes” like distanced voyeurism. Now those drone pilots might complain all they want about their boring lives, but they seem like they have some weird tastes. From God-complexes to watching their enemies copulate, to “war porn” to “Predator Porn”. They’re a creative lot, those drone pilots. They kill with a press of a button, they are not seen doing something wrong, they are perceived as pleasant people but they are virtually evil, like the guy who virtually had incestual relations with his virtual daughter; it was one of the layers of his identity and thus it is part of who he is and thus should be treated accordingly in a fair and just world. But, it’s not just that, from the constant scanning of these villages and areas, they’ve come to memorize these people’s daily lives and have come to feel an eerie sense of immersive sense of intimacy when the drones keep rotating over the same area. You know the people, you get a sense of their daily lives, and as you do that you tend to read their body language, their actions, their movements, everything. That’s called daily narrativization. By narrative infilling, they create mental narrative to accompany the pictures the videos the drones send them and thus create a whole story that the can relate to and thus have a full report. However, in this scenario, one can tend to overstep and we tend to assume we know more than we do and that’s when we make mistakes and BOOM! But this, sadly, isn’t just in reality, it is mirrored virtually as well, and is experienced by all ages. I am talking about another type of screen killing, I’m talking about shooting and killing games. There are similarities and differences to these two screen killings, however the major difference is that in gaming the younger people are raised on shooting games and are born killing people and thus are raised with these mentioned above, but less intensely, but without the stress; also known as remote stress  and is usually diagnosed as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. So, it’s basically, fun times, the madness, but without the guilt.

Prometheus, the Titan who “championed early humans” , and the main benefactor of humankind is quite intriguing. For he showed concern for his own creations, and felt that he must protect them from what might come later on, and thus stole fire from the gods and gave it to us as if through the breath of life. This sort of attachment to your creation is not unusual, it has been expressed through different ways; for example, in actions mimicking acts of lust and such, with automata or even statues. Pygmalion’s ivory lady, Galatea, the subject of his agalmatophilia, reminded me of the current Japanese craze, the “waifu” body pillows, and plastic sex dolls. These creations feed these lonely/misunderstood/weak people’s needs throughout the years, and in a way it is a show of power on a lifeless (or is it just powerless?) creation.  However, these more carnal interests would drag us into an ethical whirlwind and we would have to look at such creations, if they truly have a soul or not? If they gain more “human” characteristics, are they becoming more human? I would like to call this a question of “consensuality”; where you create statues, give them life and sensuality through skill, mechanisms, or electricity and then use them for your own pleasure without their consent. But, what if s/he does not consent? Is it statue-ry rape?

But even when it gains some elements of humanity, it truly does not become human. For it does not age, and thus we enter into the miasma of aging and decay, not to mention the issue of timelessness becoming a crucial aspect that almost challenges these “masters” idea of power and makes them realize that the tables have turned, for these timeless figurines can live forever and preserve their beauty and sensuality as the “masters” wither and die. This becomes more of an issue the more real this lust-doll looks and feels. The real-er it is, the more confusing reality becomes, and that’s when the mind games go full-on crazy. The realism of such dolls is also a show of craftsmanship, skill and talent, and the fact that it affects other humans in such ways, may be a show of power by the creator.

The more skilled the creator is = the more realistic a doll becomes = the more disillusioned the user is = the more inflated the creator’s ego becomes.

This makes us go through a power cycle and it just never ends.

This makes one think, what makes humans human? With these huge leaps in technology, soon we will be misjudging robot for human and vice-versa. Is it the soul? Does this include free-will? With AI, we can have robots/automata with certain behaviours and would act differently than each other, taking different paths, is that then free-will?