Many of the questions posed by the
movie are questions that we will eventually face, such as the
question related to Robocop himself—at what point is a man with
robot parts no longer a man?
In the movie, the police officer, Alex
Murphy, was just a pair of lungs, a heart, larynx, and head (oh yes,
and a right hand.) That was it, and when Murphy first saw that was
all that was left of himself, he wanted the doctor to pull the plug.
Eventually, he accepted his new, robotic body, but the implied
question was, “Should he be considered man or machine?” How much
of one's humanity must be left intact before we stop considering him
as human? One possible answer is that, as long as one's brain is
still functioning and he has free will, even if inside a metal
exo-skeleton, that person should still be considered human. But in
Robocop, even his brain had been integrated with computer chips and
control mechanisms. The story was somewhat focused on man overcoming
the constraints of his imprisonment—in this case, overcoming
programming—but consider a future where neural implants might be
possible. Where does the human end and the computer begin?
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