Positronic androids

Discussion in 'Trek Tech' started by Ronald Held, Apr 3, 2014.

  1. varek

    varek Commander Red Shirt

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    Akharin, the long-lived (immortal?) human knew how to construct them. And the Breen may have constructed an android-producing factory, which was destroyed. But, some of the plans may have continued to exist in several different places.
     
  2. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The Breen found the android factory in "the persistence of memory". In that trilogy the Breen could not incept them so they went the telepresence route Akharin constructed androids before Soong but were they positronic?
     
  3. varek

    varek Commander Red Shirt

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    You are right. I had forgotten that the Breen seem to have found that factory. It had probably been constructed by Lore.
    The Breen were able to activate at least 3 postitronic androids and to program them. It wasn't clear to me how well their scientists understood their workings.
     
  4. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    In which novel are you referring to? In the middle one the four androids were run via telepresence. In "persistence of memory" I did not recall any functional Breen androids that Soong did not program. I also thought Data claimed the Breen were not close to incepting positronic brains.
     
  5. varek

    varek Commander Red Shirt

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    It was one of the Cold Fusion series of novels, I think. The Breen used them to threaten the leaders secretly meeting on Orion.
     
  6. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Cold Equations. :p
     
  7. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    None of the Breen androids in the novel had positronic brains. I thought there were 4 telepresence agents running the androids where only 2 made it into the Orion bank vault.
     
  8. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    ^That sounds right to me.
     
  9. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Let's talk about cascade failure. This is a "irreversible" hardware event? Since Ahkarin can reverse this do you need to reinitialized the OS and copy over memory engrams?
     
  10. Timelord Victorious

    Timelord Victorious Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Moriarty was mentioned.
    Now would it have been possible to download his personality matrix into a positronic brain and give him an Android body?

    if so it might have been considered a tad too dangerous to give a criminal mastermind , fictional or not, a nearly indestructible body with super strength, but they should have at least considered it. :)
     
  11. Ithekro

    Ithekro Vice Admiral Admiral

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    What about the androids that Mudd had? What type of brains did they have?
     
  12. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Apparently, of the non-independent sort: pestering the Norman android with illogic caused the entire population of androids to shut down.

    Either the brains are networked but functionally basically all identical, capable of mimicking human thinking when linked but incapable when not; or then Norman has a kingpin brain different from those of the others, and may indeed do all the thinking for all the others; or then all the androids actually run from a powerful external computing source hidden somewhere in Planet Mudd. Although since Norman could operate outside Planet Mudd for great lengths of time, either he has a special brain capable of that, or then the external brain theory should be ditched altogether.

    It would seem that having human-shaped artificial bodies is not a big deal at any of the Trek eras (only Archer's crew has failed to show lack of awe in front of androids, as they encountered none), but also that such bodies virtually never contain brains of note. This is why Ruk and Norman stand out of the crowd, the former probably more than the latter (and not just in physical terms!). Certainly by the time of TNG, our heroes are well used to the idea of brainless humans, at least the ones they use for holographic entertainment; physical androids might also be around, but VOY "Prototype" confirms that Data is unique in the category of sentient androids (as far as the knowledgeable B'Elanna Torres can tell).

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  13. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I was not convinced that any "Mudd androids" were sentient, just networked. Giving Moriarty and the Countess nearly eternal bodies would be highly disturbing to me.
    No one has answered the questions in my previous post. It should be considered before I move on to the next related topic.