As someone who's also been somewhat on the fence about Data since his return, can I ask, why do you say that? Just curious.
TNG: Light Fantastic by Jeffrey Lang coming in June 2014
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To me, personally, just is strange to have this character out of Starfleet. Just not sure how he fits in the universe as much anymore. I am ready for Jeff to pull me in and make me a believer, but it just seems strange.
Just so you know, we didn't approach the idea of Data being out of Starfleet casually. It felt like the right thing to do for now, especially given the changes in Data's circumstances AND the changes to Starfleet and the Federation since Data's "death." One of the items Margaret Clark kept pushing while I was developing the story is the idea that, for the first time in his life, Data is kind of coloring outside the lines, which makes Geordi very, very nervous. The friction between these two old friends is one of the main drivers of the story.
I really appreciate your response Jeff. I have an open mind for sure. I never judge or write something off till I've seen it or read it. I do actually hope to like the book!
So does mean we will see more of the main TNG characters than just Data?
Definitely, yes, though very little of the story is set on the Enterprise.
I also am grateful for your response, Jeff. Actually, it's not so much "Data-not-in-Starfleet" that rings weirdly in my mental ear, but the new Data with fully-integrated emotions; he seems at times to be so far away from the Data we knew (and I realize that's at least partially the point). I just occasionally have a difficult time reconciling this new Data with the old. But I see Geordi is having the same problem, so I guess I'm not alone...!
^ That was the whole point of his resurrection-and-transformation in the Cold Equations trilogy — to raise ontological questions about the nature of identity for a being with a synthetic soul. (And, for that matter, to wonder whether Data's soul exists at all, existed ab initio, was transferable or able to be duplicated, or if he's a being with his memories and his father's soul, etc.)
In other words, no one's really sure if Data's back or not, and that includes Data himself. Which besides allowing for all those complex explorations of matters of self, also lets readers have Data back without playing this as a reset.
^ Precisely.
I prefer to think of this new Data more as a sort of offspring or clone of the original, a hybrid of Data's memories and the Noonien Soong android's operating system (which would probably translate as behaviors, emotions, inclinations of thought, etc.).
But it could be argued that behaviour, reactions and emotional responses are also largely learned responses shaped by experience, which is after all, memory.
I see the new Data as being Data. Slightly changed, but still Data.
But that argument would be objectively wrong. Science tells us that the human brain has many behaviors and responses that are instinctive and inbuilt, and different humans have different inclinations of thought and behavior that are functions of their basic neurology rather than life experience -- e.g. being attracted to one sex over another, or being autistic or schizophrenic, or having tone-deafness or perfect pitch. A great deal of behavior is a function of the brain's structure and anatomy rather than experience and learning. Certainly we can learn to adjust and moderate the potentials we start out with, but it's a complete fiction to claim the brain is an absolute blank slate where everything is shaped by nurture and nothing by nature.
And it wouldn't work here either, because we're talking about the operating system vs. the software it runs, or even about the hardware vs. the software. We know that "Data Soong"'s brain is structured different from Data 1.0's, simply because it has emotions if nothing else. And we know that emotions are a hardware issue for Soong-type androids because they were made possible by the installation of a chip. There are bound to be other hardware/structural differences as well, because this android's brain was designed to emulate Noonien Soong's very human psychology and behavior, rather than being a from-scratch AI like Data -- and because it's a more advanced model with upgrades over the original. So there are bound to be inbuilt potentials and inclinations that differ from those within Data's brain. These brains can't be treated as empty containers that have no influence over the minds poured into them; they would have an effect on the resultant personality.
You may well be right, but for sake of argument, an androids brain may well be a blank state when manufactured, without the hard wired responses inherent in biological brains and DNA. The 'potentials and inclinations' you refer to might need to be downloaded too, and therefore would just be the first 'memory'.
By implanting Data on the positronic brain, whatever characteristics the Soong android carried from the biological host of Soong may either have been overwritten or rewritten as Data.
The fact that the Soong brain experienced emotion may not mean that it was functionally very different from Data's when the emotion chip was connected.
Again, we already know that is not the case here, because the book actually told us that. This isn't speculation I pulled out of my hat, it's right there in the actual book. Soong 2.0's brain is different in a number of ways from Data's -- it has emotions, it's more advanced and faster, it has functions he lacked, etc. That's why Data 2.0 and others are uncertain whether he's really the same person. At best, he's an altered version of the same person. Hell, it would be boring if he weren't. It would be just a cheap reset button to resurrect Data in a way that made him exactly the same person he was before, and I know for certain that that was the last thing Dave would've wanted.
Oh I'm cool with him having 'improvements' and therefore being an altered version of the same person - that's interesting.
He is not identically the same. How close in mentation is up for debate, as well as does he have the same rights as for Data 1.0?
Does that mean that Noonien Soong works for Google since Data runs Android?
As far as the human brain goes, the brian can be "wired" differently. So take the person's memories from a brain that's wired differently and put them in a brain that's not wired differently, and that person (most likely) will then begin to think and behave differently.
Given that Data is in a brain that's wired differently from his original brain and his software is also different and he has other memories that are not his to draw on, I would think that Data is never going to be the same. From here on out, he will always be different.
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