It is a striking coincidence that I just a few days ago watched Blade Runner again, together with my son who was seeing it for the first time. Its future is too close in time to ours to seem plausible now, but other than the dates being off, the possibility of genetically engineering something better than robots to do things that we cannot is not at all implausible. And that word “something” is the heart of the issue the film explores. Just because we create entities shouldn’t give us the right to simply end their lives as we see fit, any more than it should give us the right to enslave them.
As you’ll have noticed in the image, in the movie we see that Roy Batty the replicant had a manufacture date of January 8th, 2016. And so you’ll see a lot of people today wishing him a happy birthday.
It’s also a good day to rewatch the movie, if you haven’t for a while…
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