Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 13:17:53 -0700
From: Michael Andre-Driussi 
Subject: (urth) Jonas <> Pinocchio 

Jerry Friedman and Roy Lackey disagree with my casting Jonas as wanting to
become fully bio.  I guess I should have preped my statement with
qualifiers, since while I believe "Jonas Pinocchio" is a possible reading,
and may be required for some, I myself do not hold it too tightly,
preferring Tin Man and Tin Soldier.

Since I was responding to the posts of others, it seems I should have
written something like "Such a reading would seem to require that Jonas =
Pinocchio, whereas 98% of the time we talk of Jonas = Tin Man and/or Jonas
= Steadfast Tin Soldier.  OTOH, if Jonas = Pinocchio, then Miles represents
his wish come true, in contrast to Jonas = Tin Man, where Miles represents
the opposite of his wish, a cruel torment which is then furthered by the
knowledge that Jolenta has already died."

Jerry wrote:
>Can we
>imagine a prosthetic-bearing bio in love with a chem wanting to become
>fully a chem?

Putting aside the "doing it for Love" angle . . . Uh, would that be the
horde of boys who play at being robots?  Represented in animation by Fry,
the 20th century guy in "Futurama," who tells Bender he wanted a robot
friend (or to be a robot?) since he was five years old; and Fry has
fantasies about being a robot?   Andy Warhol's phrase "I want to be a
machine"?  All the starry-eyed singularity adventists who long to be
"uploaded"?

This is hard to imagine?

(Jerry asked for the source of Steadfast Tin Soldier: Hans Christian Andersen.)

But then Roy goes further, into his "lusty robot" kick:

>All the more reason to wonder what he wanted with Jolenta.

Again, Roy, you seem to be saying that Love is impossible without, er,
compatible sexual interface devices.  I mentioned this before, I don't
recall that you answered: Is Love impossible for Jonas because he is a
robot, or is it impossible because his beloved is a bio, or is non-sexual
Love simply impossible?

=mantis=



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