Data's Brain

[woodstock]

Watching Ghost in the Shell right now, not asking to review the movie, but what if instead of a positronic brain, Data was previously a human and had his brain transferred to an android body? Of course along with all the enhancements to make him able to do calculations, quick reflexes, super strength, etc. I think he would have been a more complex, perhaps darker character. Discuss.

 

[LJS1138]

That was sort of what happened in "Schizoid Man". Ira Graves transferred his neural net into Data's positronic brain and nearly took over. Also, don't forget Juliana in Inheritance. Somewhere after creating Lore and Data, and after 2338 (when Omicron Theta was destroyed) Soong did transfer a human mind into one of his positronic brains. I'm not sure it would be a darker story, per se, because, according to Data in Silicon Avatar, his neural net was begun with the scans of the colonists' temporal lobes, which is sort of like having human minds as a basis.

In order for the story to be darker, the writers would need to write that way. Data is already very complex, especially if you scratch beneath the surface and think hard about Soong.

 

[woodstock]

Graves was pretty unstable from the start, and Juliana didn't know what she was. I'm thinking someone who was otherwise a regular person who, for whatever reason had their mind and/or brain transferred into an android body and all the implications that would go with that, emotions, enhanced abilities, outliving friends and family, fear of having lost their humanity, etc.

 

[LJS1138]

Graves was pretty unstable from the start, and Juliana didn't know what she was. I'm thinking someone who was otherwise a regular person who, for whatever reason had their mind and/or brain transferred into an android body and all the implications that would go with that, emotions, enhanced abilities, outliving friends and family, fear of having lost their humanity, etc.

I agree. I explore some of that in the stories I've done and am in the process of writing, although I mostly focus on the development and programming of neural nets.

I think TOS had a few episodes with "transfers" into android bodies, but it's been so long since I saw those. How it would have changed Data would have consisted of multiple facets.

 

[Timo]

"Return to Tomorrow" is a leading example: aliens construct the androids as blank templates for their minds, essentially whole-body prosthetics for the extremely disabled. A human scientist protests, apparently thinking her folks could build such devices equally well. Perhaps there's some precedent, and things like brains-in-a-jar-bolted-onto-androids have been tried out by the time of TOS?

One wonders if the "quicker calculations upgrade" is possible theoretically at all. What would survive of the original thought processes if key elements of them (calculations, say) were twisted out of synch (that is, sped up)? Or would the mind just easily tap into all-new resources such as a built-in calculator?

In terms of TNG drama specifically, Data may have been a simpleton or superman character, but he wasn't the onboard representative of the disabled. LaForge was, and sort of covered all the bases already. Against audience expectations, he delighted in his superman role and consistently protested against misguided attempts to "restore" the inferior, human sight he "ought" to have possessed.

This was "dark" because the superpower kept him in constant pain, and "deep" because he had so many opportunities to be downgraded to mere natural sight (Q, Pulaski, less noticeable implants) but flat out refused, and finally "tolerant" because only one asshole of a villain ever commented on his disability while all other characters thought nothing of the VISOR - but also "daring" because LaForge was depicted as a socially awkward and even downright disliked character, without the sort of writing mercy one might have expected upon a seemingly disabled character.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RAMA]

I really like the idea of Data having Asimov's Positronic Brain. So no.