Tools once helped early man increase his survivability, and they became more and more useful as means to achieve our goals. Today, innovations in technology have allowed us to fabricate tools of increasing complexity. As we recognize that the most effective tools have human characteristics, such as a computer capable of learning, we will give our tools these characteristics. If technological innovations continue, we could actually create tools that are human, or at least beings that challenge how we define being 'human.' Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and James Cameron's Terminator 2 offer two particular scenarios of futures in which the state of technology gives us the ability to do "questionable things." As we give our machines selected human characteristics to make them more efficient, they will tend to discover humanity in their own unique way, rising above their 'specifications' to actually become human.
By definition, tools are designed specifically for certain tasks, and as technological tools, the T800 and the replicant are deigned to meet specific specifications.
Blade Runner (soundtrack)
English: Costumes used in the science-fiction movi...
Blade runner guy-red on transparent bgIn Terminator 2, the T800 is a multipurpose cyborg assigned to save John Connor, given a series of "mission parameters," initially characterized by his computer logic. He often advises John based on permutations of the T1000's next move, similar to the way a chess computer decides what move to make next. Just as the T800 is designed to perform solely as a unemotional computer, the 'replicants' in Blade Runner are designed to work in slavery without protest. Since it's remarked in Blade Runner that humans develop emotions by existing for a period of time, it is predicted that replicants could not develop emotions in their four year life span. So it's easy for the society in Blade Runner to equate replicants with machines, indicated so politically by the term 'retirement.' As in...