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Star Trek and the Posthuman
Dr. Dennis M. Weiss
Professor of Philosophy
English and Humanities Department
York College of Pennsylvania
York, PA 17405
This essay examines a central preoccupation of late twentieth-century, early twenty-first-
century Western life, the human-machine interface, from the perspective of a close
reading of the Star Trek franchise. Following a brief account of the current cultural
context of this issue, I will defend the appropriation of Star Trek for the purposes of
examining this theme. I will then consider how the issue of the human-machine interface
has evolved through three of the Star Trek shows, Star Trek (the original series, hereafter
TOS), Star Trek: The Next Generation (hereafter TNG), and Voyager (hereafter V). This
examination of Star Trek reveals an evolving concern with questions about human and
machine interaction and a nuanced and, I will argue, philosophically respectable
alternative to some of the current end-of-man theories predominating in what might be
called “posthuman studies.”
I
This section briefly considers the context of current debates over the posthuman and the
human-machine interface and argues that a central preoccupation of the second half of
the twentieth century and a continuing issue for the twenty-first is the human-machine
interface. From the impact of artificial intelligence on our understanding of the mind to
the current interest in cyborgs, virtual reality, the flight to cyberspace, and artificial life,
we are witnessing an extended struggle over the significance of what it means to be
human in the digital age. There are signs all about us of this struggle, skirmishes over the
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definition of the human. These signs can be seen in both the popular press and in
academic circles. Consider, for instance, two recent issues of Wired magazine. The
February, 2000 issue featured a cover story called “I, Robot.” Behind the subheading,
“Cybernetics pioneer Kevin Warwick is upgrading the human body—starting with
himself,” is an image of Warwick with the sleeve of his left arm rolled up. Superimposed
on that image is the image of an x-ray revealing the microchip he has inserted into his
arm as the first step in his transformation into a cyborg. Wired followed this up in the
April issue with the musings of Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy arguing that the
very kind of experiments promoted by Warwick will eventually lead to the extinction of
the human race. Based on his reading of authors such as Hans Moravec and Ray
Kurzweil, Joy argues that computers will soon outstrip human intelligence and we will
become like ants to our technological descendants. Joy is sounding a clarion call to
human beings to wake up and smell the Terminator. Wired brings together these two
polarizing articles on the future of what it means to be human and what the impact of
technology will be on that definition. In The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil
argues, “the primary political and philosophical issue of the next century will be the
definition of who we are” (2). Ed Regis explores our “transhuman, postbiological” future
in Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition, suggesting that perhaps the
human condition is a condition “to be gotten out of” (175). O. B. Hardison too suggests
that the human being is flawed and that the relation between carbon man and our silicon
devices is “like the relation between the caterpillar and the iridescent, winged creature
that the caterpillar unconsciously prepares to become” (335). Similar accounts of the
changing nature of the human-machine interface and its implications for future human
life can be found in Hans Moravec’s Mind Children and Robot, Grant Fjermedal’s The
Tomorrow Makers, and Bruce Mazlish’s The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-evolution of
Humans and Machines.
That the popularity of these ideas extends beyond a small handful of trade books is
indicated not only by the success of magazines such as Wired but as well by the attention
generated by the chess matches pitting Gary Kasparov against IBM’s computer chess
player Deep Blue. News accounts of the match made much of this battle between human
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and machine. In Newsweek, for instance, Steven Levy wrote that Kasparov was fighting
for all of us: “all of us, that is, with spit in our mouths and DNA in our cells. To chess
enthusiasts the first-game loss was more than a shock: it was the apocalypse. The feeling
was that supremacy in chess represented an important foothold in the battle against the
computer’s relentless incursion in the human domain.” USA Today ran a cover story on
the chess match the headline of which read: “Can this Man Save the Human Race?” It
was, according to the newspaper, the ultimate man versus machine showdown, brain cells
versus microchips. The New York Times weighed in with the suggestion that the historic
match was a “symbolically, if not actually, profound event in the history of brains, human
and otherwise.”
Further evidence of this preoccupation with the human-machine interface is found in
contemporary science fiction cinema and film. The recent popularity of the film The
Matrix clearly indicates a sense of concern over the computer’s “relentless incursion in
the human domain.” The Matrix imagines a future in which human beings become little
more than battery packs for computers who hold us hostage by generating a virtual reality
twentieth century to preoccupy us and keep us busy while they feed off of our bodies’
electromagnetic energy. The movie’s hero, Neo, is “the one” who will lead the human
beings in their revolution against the dominance of machines. Similar themes of the
struggle between human and machine are played out repeatedly in the last forty years of
science fiction cinema. Highlights of this struggle would include Colossus: The Forbin
Project, Demon Seed, Bladerunner, and The Terminator. J. P. Telotte, in Replications: A
Robotic History of the Science fiction Film, argues that the image of human replication in
recent science fiction indicates our qualms about our own nature. “In these images of
human replication are bound up all our qualms about artifice—science, technology,
mechanism—and, what is more important, about our nature as artificers, constructors of
the real, and of the self—homo faber” (4). A similar preoccupation runs through much
contemporary science fiction literature, most clearly evident in the cyberpunk writings of
Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, and Tom Maddox, among others.
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This issue of the human-machine interface has also preoccupied academic scholars as
well. Sherry Turkle has produced a body of work over the past twenty years that details
the impact of the computer revolution on our sense of ourselves as human beings. Turkle
argues that the computer and its attendant technologies, the Internet, MUDs, artificial life,
offer a series of objects with which to think about human nature. These technologies
provoke questions about our nature and uniqueness as human beings. As she suggests,
“The computer raises questions about where we stand in nature and where we stand in the
world of artifact. We search for a link between who we are and what we have made,
between who we are and what we might create, between who we are and what, through
our intimacy with our own creations, we might become” (The Second Self, 12). While
philosophers and social theorists such as Hubert Dreyfus, John Searle, Alan Woolfe, and
Sven Birkerts have decried the growing influence and impact of technological models on
our understanding of human nature, others have not been so alarmed, suggesting that the
very meaning of the human is being transformed in the digital age. In The War of Desire
and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age Allucquere Rosanne Stone suggests
that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift from the mechanical age to the virtual age and
we now inhabit the cyborg habitat of the technosocial, in which technology is viewed as
natural and human nature becomes a cultural construct. The ubiquity of technology,
Stone suggests, rearranges our thinking apparatus and calls into question “the structure of
meaning production by which we recognize each other as human” (173). Similarly, Mark
Poster argues that in the mode of information a symbiotic merger between human and
machine is taking place, “one,” he writes, “that threatens the stability of our sense of the
boundary of the human body in the world. What may be happening is that human beings
create computers and then computers create a new species of humans” (4). In How We
Became Posthuman, Katherine Hayles argues that the model of the human since the
Enlightenment, the liberal, humanist subject, is being changed through the mediation of
information technologies into the posthuman: embodiment is secondary to pattern and
information, consciousness is decentered and rendered a mere epiphenomenon, the body
is a prosthesis to be radically redesigned as necessary, and the boundaries between human
and machine have been imploded. “In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or
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absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic
mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals” (3).
This brief sketch of our current cultural context does indeed suggest that there is a series
of interrelated issues which make up the problem of the human-machine interface. What,
if anything, serves to distinguish human beings from machines? How is human nature
changing as a result of technological advances? Is the boundary between human and
machine disappearing, as machines become more life-like and human beings more
mechanical? Is the cyborg a model for the future evolution of humanity? Ought we to
fear further technological development? Does technological development mean the
extinction of humanity? These issues, which I group under the heading of the human-
machine interface, receive extended discussion in Star Trek, thus warranting a closer look
at this cultural phenomenon.
II
This section briefly defends the selection of Star Trek as a lens through which to examine
the issues set out in the previous section. There are a number of reasons warranting the
examination of Star Trek in this context. In one incarnation or another Star Trek has been
part of the popular imagination for more than thirty years, beginning with the debut of the
original series in 1966 and including TNG, V, Deep Space Nine, the movie franchise
(now more than 8 movies), the cartoon series, and a large number of Star Trek novels.
Given its almost unprecedented run and continuing popularity, Star Trek provides us with
an historical text that represents back to us in the form of a futuristic narrative our present
concerns and preoccupations in regard to technology. It has often been noted that science
fiction is as much about our present time as it is about future time and given this
widespread presumption, Star Trek can be read both as an account of our current thinking
about the issues discussed here and as an account of how this thinking has evolved over
the past thirty years. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to assume that the lengthy
popularity of Star Trek over these past thirty years might itself have had some influence
on how people think about the human-machine interface and indicate that people are
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generally accepting of Star Trek’s perspective on this issue. Star Trek may represent for
many people their first contact with these themes. Additionally, its popularity may
suggest that the manner in which Star Trek deals with these issues has some holding
power. Perhaps the audience likes what it sees in the way in which Star Trek deals with
the issue of the place of human beings in an advanced technological society. Star Trek’s
continued popularity, then, is perhaps a sign of how people want to think about the future
and a sign of people’s attitudes toward the changes taking place as we mutate from a
modern, print-based, mechanical culture, to a postmodern, digital and virtual culture. This
suggests too that Star Trek is deserving of some critical attention.
Another reason for investigating Star Trek in regard to this theme is the show’s own pro-
technological spin. A number of cinematic portrayals of this theme, such as The Matrix
and the Terminator series, approach the human-machine interface from an anti-
technology stance. In “Technophobia,” Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner note that in
many contemporary science fiction films, technology functions as a crucial ideological
figure. Our fears of machines or of technology are mobilized on behalf of a largely
conservative agenda that affirms such social values as freedom, individualism, and the
family (58). In the generally more liberal ideology of Star Trek, technology is not usually
portrayed as something evil or something to be feared; the technophobia noted by Ryan
and Kellner in much mainstream science fiction cinema is absent. Thus, Star Trek avoids
what might be thought of as “poisoning the well” in its approach to the theme of the
human-machine interface.
Finally, an analysis of these themes from the perspective of a close reading of Star Trek
is warranted because it has received too little critical attention over the years. There is
already in place a vast oeuvre devoted to the academic study of Star Trek and many of
the best of these essays have been collected in the volume Enterprise Zones. There are
some noticeable lacunae in this body of work, though. There have been relatively few
attempts to chart some of the historical shifts that have taken place in the representation
of themes through the Star Trek oeuvre. Furthermore, while the issue of the human-
machine interface has been a significant theme in Star Trek, this issue has been unjustly
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ignored. Finally, this theme may have received so little attention because many scholars
who have addressed these issues do so from a perspective influenced by postmodernism,
cultural studies, and multiculturalism, a perspective which may fit poorly with Star
Trek’s perceived Enlightenment, liberal, and modernist ideology. While there is much
truth to the claim that Star Trek celebrates an Enlightenment view of human nature, its
approach to technology and the issue of the human-machine interface is not easily
dismissed as simply outmoded. An examination of this theme in Star Trek might reveal a
more nuanced view than is sometimes attributed to the show.
One final preliminary point. Some might object that it is illegitimate to treat Star Trek as
a single text, given that we must perforce deal with numerous television shows and
movies written by many individuals, unfolding over thirty years. Such a body of work
does not offer a single, unified reading in support of any simple thesis on the human-
machine interface. There is much truth to this claim. This essay does not insist on the
unity of Star Trek as a text. Like any complex text, it is multiply signifying and supports
many readings. The sheer number of shows to be considered makes it likely that
alternative readings could be constructed. Indeed, there is some ambivalence in Star
Trek’s treatment of these issues. At the same time, the notions of author and text have
been sufficiently problematized that these points are equally applicable to even a single
text or single author. Additionally, there is already a long history in literary theory and
cultural studies of pulling together disparate texts that exhibit a common theme or
concern. Furthermore, the various histories and compendiums of Star Trek suggest that
Gene Roddenberry insisted on tight and consistent controls over his franchise and that the
various writers and directors worked within a set of principles that while seemingly
dynamic, maintain a consistent voice.
III
Turning now to an examination of Star Trek, this section first discusses the manner in
which Star Trek has dealt with the human-machine interface and then considers the
implications of this. The following chart documents the various marginal beings that
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straddle and so problematize the boundary between human and machine in TOS, TNG,
and V.
Star Trek
1966-1969
Star Trek: The Next Generation
1987-1994
Voyager
1995 -
I. Computers and Artificial
Intelligence
Nomad: “The Changeling”
Landrau: “Return of the
Archons”
Vaal: “The Apple”
M-5: “The Ultimate
Computer”
V’ger: Star Trek: The
Motion Picture
I. Computers and Artificial
Intelligence
I. Computers and Artificial
Intelligence
Warhead: “Warhead”
II. Androids
Norman: “I, Mudd”
Brown, Roc, Andrea: “What
are Little Girls Made Of?”
Rayna: “Requiem for Methuselah”
II. Androids
Data: “The Measure of the
Man”; passim
Lore: “Datalore”; “Brothers”;
“Descent”
Lal: “The Offspring”
II. Androids
Automated Personnel Unit:
“Prototype”
III. Downloading the Human
Mind
Korby: “What are Little
Girls Made Of?”
III. Downloading the Human
Mind
Graves: “The Schizoid Man”
Tainer: “Inheritance”
III. Downloading the Human
Mind
IV. Cyborgs
IV. Cyborgs
La Forge: passim
Picard: “Samaritan Snare”;
“Tapestry”
Locutus: “The Best of Both
Worlds”
The Borg: “Q Who”; “The Best of Both Worlds”; First
Contact
Hugh: “I, Borg”, “Descent”
IV. Cyborgs
The Borg Cooperative:
“Unity”
The Borg: “Scorpion”; “Dark
Frontier”
Seven of Nine: “Scorpion”;
passim
Superborg: “Drone”
V. Virtual Beings V. Virtual Beings
Moriarty: “Elementary, Dear
Data”; “Ship in a Bottle”
V. Virtual Beings
The Doctor: passim
VI. Emergent Beings and
Assorted Others
VI. Emergent Beings and
Assorted Others
Nanites: “Evolution”
Exocomps: “The Quality of
Life”
Ship’s Computer:
“Emergence”
VI. Emergent Beings and
Assorted Others
There are a number of things to note about this chart. As the focus of this essay is on the
human-machine interface, I have included neither examples of technology that are
portrayed as non-problematic in these terms (the holodeck, the transporter) nor biological
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aliens who might be relevant to an examination of human nature but don’t contribute to
an analysis of the stated theme of this essay (i.e. Spock, Whorf, Kess, etc.). The chart
identifies six broad categories of these marginal or liminal beings: artificial intelligences,
androids, human minds downloaded into a machine, cyborgs, virtual beings, and
emergent beings. TOS was preoccupied most with the first two classes of marginal
beings, as would be expected given the interest in artificial intelligence in the late sixties
and early seventies. A similar focus can be seen in cinematic releases from the same time
period: 2001, Colossus, The Stepford Wives, Demon Seed. In both TOS and these
cinematic releases, these marginal beings are to be feared. Both TNG and V devote
relatively little time to exploring these marginal beings, suggesting perhaps that interest
in artificial minds has diminished and the audience is more comfortable exploring other
issues. TNG devotes considerable attention to the issue of androids, especially in the
character of Data. But while the android perhaps becomes normalized in the context of
TNG, the cyborg becomes the villain audience members love to hate. The Borg occupy a
role in the TNG universe similar to that occupied by artificial intelligence in TOS. TNG
also introduces the character of the virtual being, in the form of the holodeck character
Moriarty, though it doesn’t develop this type of marginal being. V in turn normalizes the
image of the cyborg, introducing the character of Seven of Nine, and as well presents a
positive spin on virtual beings such as the ship’s doctor. A very brief analysis of this
chart, then, suggests that indeed Star Trek did evolve in its consideration of marginal
human-machine beings and did seem, at least on the surface, to move considerably in the
direction toward an acceptance of beings that in earlier generations of the show had been
demonized. I would now like to examine some of these issues in greater detail,
concentrating on a number of closely related themes.
These marginal beings ultimately serve to remind us of the superiority and uniqueness of
human beings.
TOS presents a number of marginal beings who judge human beings to be inferior. The
robot Nomad, for instance, kills billions, we are told, in his search for perfection. The
android Roc has destroyed the old ones, his makers, because they were irrational, too
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emotional. They represent evil to the perfection of the android. Similarly, Norman and his
android culture judge that human beings are imperfect and must be controlled for their
own good. Similar messages come through in TNG and V. In “Descent,” Lore allies
himself with the Borg, promising a future in which the reign of biological life forms is
coming to an end. Lore in fact promises the Borg release from their organic parts, helping
them to become a superior race by becoming fully artificial. The Borg of course are on a
search for perfection and regularly remind us how small and insignificant are human
beings. In First Contact the Borg Queen judges human beings to be flawed, weak,
organic. Similarly, in the V episode “Dark Frontier” the Borg Queen argues that human
compassion, sentiment, guilt, empathy are all failings and irrelevant, and chides Seven of
Nine for becoming too human.
But while judging the human race to be inferior, the role these marginal beings play is to
remind the viewer of the inherent superiority of humanity. The most common response to
these marginal beings in TOS, for instance, underscores human ingenuity and superiority
to rigid, rule-following mechanisms. In “The Changeling,” “Return of the Archons,”
“The Apple” and other shows, Kirk uses his own command of logic to confuse and
ultimately destroy or disarm artificial intelligences, especially those that threaten to
enslave human beings, as Vaal and Landrau had. Norman and his android companions
are disabled by the Enterprise crew through their irrational antics. Kirk and his crew are
able to use both logic and emotion and higher-level thinking that ultimately confound the
more limited machine mind. And it is precisely the characteristics of compassion and
empathy, those characteristics rejected by the Borg Queen, that motivate Picard and
Janeway to self-sacrifice, perhaps a distinctively human virtue. It is Picard’s loyalty to
Data that impels him to offer himself up to the Borg Queen, prompting her to respond:
“Such a noble creature. A quality we sometimes lack.” Janeway risks her entire crew in
order to save Seven of Nine when she is captured by the Borg.
Repeatedly, Star Trek uses these marginal figures to remind us of the unique and mostly
virtuous characteristics of humanity. Kirk is able to demonstrate the value of human
ingenuity, flexibility, and emotion as he regularly draws on these distinctive human traits
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to disarm and destroy mechanical pretenders to the throne. It is the contrast between us
and the Borg that permits Star Trek to emphasize the characteristics of human
individuality, autonomy, and self-determination. Even the less threatening characters of
Data, the Doctor, and Seven of Nine play a similar role. It is through Data’s long process
of trying to understanding and attain humanity that the unique characteristics of what it is
to be human are regularly kept in front of the Star Trek audience. As we watch Data try
to understand poker, humor, music, painting, dreaming, we learn what it is that separates
human beings from machines and reaffirms the essential difference between the two. In
fact, I would suggest that this represents one of Star Trek’s extended arguments against
the claim that the boundary between human and machine has become increasingly
permeable. As we regularly watch especially Data and the Doctor attempt to understand
what it is to be human, we are given an object lesson in why it is that they themselves
cannot be human. In these object lessons, Star Trek affirms the importance of human
embodiment, feelings and emotions, love, spontaneity, the unconscious, family, and
culture.
Star Trek also reminds us that even as we embrace technology and even as technology
threatens to erase our distinctive humanity, some element of the human will remain and
can be recovered from the overlay of technology. We see this in regard to Picard’s
humanity fighting his Borg implants after he has been transformed into the Borg Locutus.
Similarly, Seven of Nine, despite being assimilated as a young child, is able to make the
transition back to humanity, to recover her sense of self and individuality. In the V
episode “Unity” we are presented with an entire planet of Borg who have been separated
from the collective and are able to remember their names, where they came from. As one
character suggests, “We were free! We could think for ourselves again.…It was like
waking up from a long nightmare.” A similar theme is developed in the V episode
“Survival Instinct,” where a number of Borg drones, separated from the collective, begin
to revert to their pre-Borg states, allowing them to recover their sense of individuality and
identity. Star Trek reassures us that in embracing technology we are not losing what is
unique and distinctive about our humanity.
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Attempting to achieve perfection through technological means alone inevitably fails.
A common theme throughout all the incarnations of Star Trek is that the technological is
not an apt model for a human life and the attempt to flee one’s humanity by embracing
the technological will end is disaster. This message serves as a counterpoint to current
technoenthusiasts such as Hans Moravec, Danny Hillis, O. B. Hardison and others who
argue that we must leave our flawed bodies behind, download our consciousnesses into
machines, and take up life in cyberspace. We cannot, Star Trek argues, achieve perfection
through technology. Both Korby, from TOS episode “What are Little Girls Made of?,”
and Graves, from TNG episode “The Schizoid Man,” attempt to liberate themselves from
their flawed and sick bodies and achieve immortality by downloading their minds into
android bodies. But both are shown to have lost their humanity in the process, becoming
repulsive to the women they love, and ultimately electing to die rather than live on in
their android bodies. We regularly see the Borg argue that they are pursuing perfection
through the assimilation of other species while, simultaneously, that goal is thwarted
through the intervention of fully organic human beings.
Perhaps the most interesting and extended example of this theme comes in TNG film
Insurrection, at the center of which is the conflict between the Son’a and the Bak’u. The
Bak’u, who reside on a planet whose unique properties preserve their youth, have
evolved an agrarian society that deliberately shuns technology. When some of their
youth, driven by the allure of technology, rebel they are banished from the planet. They
return many years later as the Son’a, who have indeed developed advanced technology
but who in the process of using that technology to artificially extend their lives have
become disfigured, hideous exemplars of plastic surgery gone awry. The consequences of
their embrace of technology as the path toward perfection is literally represented on the
surface of their bodies, suggesting again the empty promise of technology as a means to
perfection. Repeatedly, then, Star Trek reminds us that human perfectibility can not be
found in technology alone. It should be noted, however, that Insurrection is not an anti-
technology film. It is only through the intervention of the crew of the Enterprise that the
Bak’u are saved. Their commitment to an agrarian lifestyle can be guaranteed only
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through the promise of the advanced technology of a Starfleet starship. It is equally
interesting to note that when given the opportunity to stay behind with the Bak’u and
pursue a relationship with Anij, Picard declines, suggesting that he would not be
comfortable accepting the Bak’u lifestyle.
Technology that threatens to breach the boundary between human and machine must be
tightly controlled or destroyed.
This theme is portrayed most explicitly and very visually in the interesting climax to First
Contact. In the climactic scene, Picard and Data attempt to destroy the Borg that have
captured the Enterprise by venting a gas through engineering that destroys flesh. As
Picard attempts to save himself by climbing above the cloud of deadly gas, the Borg
Queen latches onto his leg and tries to pull herself up. Simultaneously, we see Data’s
hand extend up out of the gas and pull the Borg Queen down into the deadly gas. It is at
this moment that we see arrayed before us the fully human (Picard), the cyborg
occupying a middle ground (the Borg Queen), and the fully mechanical android (Data).
But it is a moment that cannot last. The Queen dies by having all of her organic parts
destroyed. And Data too, who was promised humanity through the introduction of
organic skin to his android body, has lost his tenuous contact with the human, his flesh
too being burnt away. This scene from First Contact visually serves to remind us that the
middle ground between human and machine is inherently unstable.
This was perhaps the most common theme in the original series, especially when
technology threatened to rob human beings of their autonomy and put in place a
controlled (perhaps cybernetic) society. On several occasions we watch as Kirk uses his
command of logic to confuse and ultimately disarm or destroy various computers,
including Vaal and Landrau, M-5, the artificial mind that was designed to replace star
ship captains, and Nomad, the artificially intelligent space probe. The advanced android
Roc is so well designed he exceeds his programming and kills his makers and when he
threatens Kirk and his crew, must himself be destroyed. Norman and his android
companions are neutralized by the Enterprise crew through their irrational behavior. In
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each case, technology threatens to disrupt the otherwise firm boundaries between human
and machine, putting human beings at risk and under the control of technology. And in
each case, the technology is destroyed.
While TNG and V appear more lenient in this regard, permitting marginal beings such as
Data, Seven of Nine, and the Doctor to become crew members, the theme does not
entirely disappear. Lore occupies a very similar position in TNG as M5, Nomad, and Roc
do in TOS. He is an android judged to be too perfect, the cause of the destruction of the
colony at Omicron Theta, and he ultimately meets the same fate as his brethren, twice
being disabled. The Borg become the villains we love to hate in both TNG and V and
must regularly be neutralized for threatening to set up a model of the perfect cyborg
society. The virtual Moriarty is neutralized twice and at the end of “Ship in a Bottle” is
literally captured or contained within a microchip embedded in crystal.
There are few marginal beings who successfully challenge the boundary between human
and machine and those that do, often die as a result. In TOS, both Rayna and Andrea are
androids who come to experience feelings, acceding to human sentience. But the
confusion they experience leads both to die. Andrea seemingly sacrifices herself rather
than living without the love of Korby, and Rayna, confused over the struggle between her
love for Kirk and her creator, she simply collapses. Similarly, when Data “builds” a
daughter for himself, Lal, she too comes to experience emotion but, when Starfleet and
Data disagree over her future, the conflict leads to a failure in her neural net and she too
dies.
While it might seem that Data stands as an exception to the claim that the middle ground
between human and machine is problematic in Star Trek, in fact TNG does problematize
Data’s position. While it is true that Data is accorded legal rights, those rights are
questioned in several subsequent episodes and in the manner in which Star Fleet regularly
deals with Data. Additionally, the existence of Lore, Data’s evil twin brother, further
complicates Data’s standing in the middle ground. Lore serves to remind us of Data’s
nature as an android, and the fact that he is Data’s twin underscores this role. Lore is
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Data’s twin both literally and metaphorically, the mirror of Data, who, in both the
episodes “Datalore” and “Brothers,” disables Data and literally assumes his identity,
tricking both their creator, Noonien Soong, and the Enterprise crew.
Furthermore, Star Trek often portrays these middle-ground characters as more susceptible
to corruption and problems. An interesting example of this theme occurs in the V episode
“Equinox,” in which the Doctor’s ethical subroutines are turned off, transforming the
once mild-mannered Doctor into a virtual Mengele, ready to experiment on Seven of
Nine, even if it means her death. His behavior is starkly contrasted with the crew’s own
debate over ethical issues and their determination to act on moral principles that
ultimately preserves the life of a newly encountered species. This serves to remind us of
the essential difference between these marginal beings and ourselves and also points out
how their attempt to achieve humanity is inherently unstable.
Finally, when such marginal beings as Data, the Doctor, and Seven of Nine are permitted
in the Star Trek universe, it is only under very stringent conditions. First, in the case of
many of these marginal beings, we regularly see that they are still subject to some control
by human beings. Generally there exists a built-in capacity to control these beings or shut
them down. This is significant in the case of Data, for instance, as we learn that he has an
on/off switch, allowing us to infer that if the technology ever gets out of control, we can
simply shut it down. In fact, it is Riker’s discovery of Data’s switch, in the episode “The
Measure of the Man,” that leads him to argue that Data is a mere machine, significantly
unlike us, and not deserving of rights. Similarly, the crew of Voyager can exercise some
control over the Doctor by changing his programming and by shutting him down or
turning him off. Even Seven of Nine must regularly regenerate, and we often see the
Doctor or Janeway ordering her to her regeneration station, especially in moments of
conflict between these characters. In The Second Self, Sherry Turkle observes that
children, playing with electronic and battery-driven toys that seem almost alive, enjoy
exercising their sense of control over the toys by “pulling the plug.” “The children allow
the toy its autonomous behavior, and then, when it is most like a living thing, they kill it”
(37). Turkle suggests that through this act the children reassert their control over the
16
technology. Similarly, while Star Trek may permit marginal beings, they too come with
the means to be controlled.
Second, these marginal beings generally occupy the less threatening “feminine” position,
in contrast to the typically hypermasculine android common in much science fiction
cinema (the Terminator series, Robocop, Universal Soldier). Even the few virtual beings
that have been presented in science fiction film are strong masculine characters: the
Russell Crowe character from Virtuosity, Jobe in Lawnmower Man, the computer
programs occupying the mainframe computer in Disney’s Tron. In contrast to this, the
Doctor and Data seem more feminized. Both are presented as somewhat soft and fleshy,
not the armored bodies typical of villains, as in for instance the Borg. The Doctor is often
portrayed as wracked with self-doubt, worried about danger and risk. Data too is often
portrayed as helpless in the face of complex human interactions. This position is further
underscored by the connection suggested between these figures, especially Data, and
children. Data is explicitly counseled to be more childlike in Insurrection and we
regularly observe these characters being socialized much in the way children are
socialized. Furthermore, many of the androids who seemingly successfully make the
transition from android to sentient being are female: Andrea and Rayna from TOS, and
Data’s daughter Lal, and these androids are either involved with men as lovers (Andrea,
Rayna) or are fathered exclusively by ostensibly male figures (Data’s fathering Lal). The
stereotypically masculine scientists Graves and Korby, both of whom want to beat death,
achieve immortality, and take their respective girl friends with them, are not permitted to
survive and ultimately take their own lives. In the case of Juliana Tainer, on the other
hand, her mind too has been downloaded into an android body but she doesn’t suffer the
same fate as Graves and Korby. What marks her as distinctive is her femininity. We learn
that she thinks of herself as Data’s mother, was once married to Noonien Soong, and isn’t
in fact aware of being an android, as Soong transferred her consciousness without her
awareness. Finally we should note that the majority of Borg who are reintroduced into the
Star Trek family are hyperfeminized (as is Seven of Nine) or childlike (as is Hugh, from
TNG, and the child Borg rescued by Seven of Nine).
17
A third condition placed on these marginal beings is that that they be humanized or
socialized as part of the process of existing as marginal beings. The first marginal being
to perhaps threaten the boundary between human and machine is Rayna, from TOS, who
comes to experience emotions in the struggle between her love for Kirk and her loyalty to
her creator. It is the introduction of Kirk and the introduction of love that permits Rayna
to grow beyond her limited programming. Similarly, Lal is socialized into emotions
through witnessing human struggle. More significantly, Data, Seven, and the Doctor each
go through an extensive process of socialization where they learn to become more
human. The Doctor is taught to be more human by Kes, and he in turns takes on the
project of humanizing Seven, who also interacts regularly with the one child aboard
Voyager, Naomi Wildman. For a being to successfully occupy the middle ground, then, it
must be socialized into the human community.
Rather than modeling human beings after technology, technology should be modeled
after human beings.
Rather than presenting the human as ever more artificial, more technological, Star Trek
suggests that it is technology that must be humanized and in doing so implies an account
of human nature that goes beyond the stereotypical Enlightenment model of human
nature often associated with the show. While the Enlightenment model of human nature
typically emphasizes independence, autonomy, rationality, and rights, the account
implied in Star Trek’s musings on humanized technology suggests the importance of
relationships, interdependence, parenting, responsibility, emotion, and embodiment, in
short, what might be thought of as a more feminist model of technology and human
nature.
In support of this claim, permit me to reiterate the above point concerning the
humanizing process of Star Trek’s marginal beings. Each of the stable and recurring
figures of Star Trek that threaten to disrupt the boundary between human and machine is
socialized into the crew and the crew is itself often portrayed as the adoptive family of
these marginal beings. It is through his regular interaction with the Enterprise crew, both
18
officially and in his off-duty hours, that Data comes to understand something of what it
means to be human. Data performs for his friends (as a standup comic, a violinist, an
actor), he attends a regular poker match, he cares for his pet cat “Spot.” Data has a father
(Soong), mother (Tainer), a brother with whom to act out a sibling rivalry (Lore), and
eventually even a daughter (Lal). Data’s process of socialization is highlighted in the film
Insurrection in his interactions with the child Artim. Data explains to Artim that he has
often tried to imagine what it is like to be a child, that he “would gladly accept the
requirement of a bedtime in exchange for knowing what it is like to be a child.” Artim
counsels Data that if he is to know what it is to be a child, he needs to learn to play.
Similar themes are explored in V. Seven of Nine, who has lost her biological family to
the Borg, comes to view, if somewhat warily, Janeway and the crew of Voyager as her
surrogate family. She regularly discusses the process of her “humanization” with
Janeway, who serves as a model of what a human being is and regularly reminds her that
the crew is her new family. It is significant in this respect that Seven of Nine often
interacts with Naomi Wildman, the young daughter of a crewmate, for while Naomi often
emulates the Borg, she also insists that Seven of Nine adopt a more human and humane
attitude, playing games with the child, taking her to dinner, etc. In “Survival Instinct,”
Seven is troubled over her former relationship to the Borg and ultimately turns to Naomi
for reassurance, asking her whether she considers Seven family. When Naomi responds
yes and asks Seven whether she thinks of her as family, Seven responds yes. After a
difficult confrontation with several former Borg, Seven, alone in the Astrometrics Lab, is
joined by Naomi. “I thought maybe you might want to spend some time with…family,”
she says, taking her place next to Seven. V makes clear that the process of becoming
human is a process that must take place among humans, as an interdependent being
responsible for others but who is in turn the responsibility of others.
The Doctor too is socialized by the intuitive and feminine Kes, who encourages him to
develop and evolve his own identity. The Doctor even constructs his own holodeck
family so that he might learn how to interact better with the crew, who have lost their
own families. In the aptly titled “Real Life,” the Doctor initially programs the perfect
19
family: a loving wife who keeps perfect house, two adoring, smart, and perfect children.
After introducing this holo-family to Kes and Torres, however, they object that it is too
perfect and he will never learn anything about having a family from this perfectly
simulated version. Torres adjusts the holodeck program, making the characters somewhat
less predictable, and the Doctor then has to learn how to adjust himself to the new
scenario. His initial approach, though, is to try to rationally engineer the family’s time
together, and this results first in a discontented family and then, ultimately, in the death of
his holo-program daughter. But as his daughter lies dying, the Doctor terminates the
program rather than dealing with his family tragedy. Later, though, he is encouraged to
return and play out the drama. As Tom Paris remarks to him, “You wanted a family. That
means taking the good along with the bad. You can't have one without the other.” Paris
points out that the crew of Voyager has been brought closer through their shared
experience of suffering and that if the Doctor doesn’t finish the program, he will not only
fail to comfort his wife and son but will fail to realize the comfort they can bring him:
“You’ll miss the whole point of what it means to have a family.” Consequently, the
Doctor returns to his holodeck program and learns something of what it means to be part
of a family. “Real Life” portrays another step in the Doctor’s humanization, his coming
to understand what it means to be part of a family, having obligations to other family
members, learning to put up with their inadequacies, comforting them in times of tragedy,
and learning to be comforted by their presence.
The success of these marginal beings breaching the boundary between human and
machine is in direct contrast to those beings who fail to “make the grade,” so to speak.
Lore was deemed to be imperfect by Soong’s wife Juliana Tainer, who encouraged Soong
to dismantle him. Lore, then, in contrast to Data, was unwanted, metaphorically unloved
as a child, with the consequence being his eventual alignment with the Borg and his war
on humanity in “Descent.” M5, the artificial intelligence created by Richard Daystrom,
malfunctions while in control of the Enterprise and kills the crew of the Excalibur.
Daystrom had impressed his own unstable mental “engrams” on the machine, and it is
only by treating it as an errant child that Kirk is able to shut it down. M5 was
insufficiently socialized, had a poor parent as a model, and so could not make the
20
successful transition to marginal being. The most damaging technology, such as M5 and
Lore, are also the most “damaged,” set free with insufficient socialization. Equally
noteworthy is the absence of mothers in regard to these seemingly wayward “children.”
Most of the marginal beings that Star Trek presents are created solely by men: M5 is built
by Richard Daystrom, Nomad was built by Jackson Roykirk, Rayna was created by Flint,
Brown and Andrea by Korby, with the assistance of Roc. It is also worth noting that
while Data is generally portrayed as the creation of Noonien Soong, Juliana Tainer was
married to Soong and thinks of herself as Data’s mother. Relatedly, there are no mothers
among the Borg. The problem with the Borg Collective is that one requires neither
socialization nor mothers, only assimilation. In “Dark Frontier” Seven of Nine is forced
to choose between her Borg Queen and Janeway, her substitute mother. While the Borg
Queen promises Seven the perfection of the Collective, she has used and manipulated
Seven, including presenting to her the Borg drone that was once her father. Janeway, on
the other hand, is portrayed as motivated by care and compassion for her crew and Seven
ultimately opts for this model of humanity.
The process of socialization that Data and the Doctor and Seven of Nine undergo is
reminiscent of what Annette Baier has characterized as learning “the arts of personhood.”
In a series of insightful articles, Baier has argued that persons are the creation of persons.
All persons start out as children, born to earlier persons from whom they learn the arts of
personhood. “A person, perhaps, is best seen as one who was long enough dependent
upon other persons to acquire the essential arts of personhood. Persons essentially are
second persons, who grow up with other persons” (1985, 84). As Lorraine Code points
out in her discussion of Baier, uniqueness, creativity, and moral accountability, Baier
argues, grow out of interdependence and continually turn back to it for affirmation and
continuation (82). Persons require, according to Baier, successive periods of infancy,
childhood and youth, during which they develop as persons. “In virtue of our long and
helpless infancy, persons, who all begin as small persons, are necessarily social beings,
who first learn from older persons, by play, by imitation, by correction” (1991, 10). Gods,
Baier observes, if denied childhood, cannot be persons because “[p]ersons are essentially
successors, heirs to other persons who formed and cared for them, and their personality is
21
revealed both in their relations to others and in their response to their own recognized
genesis” (1985 85). It is our social nature, the fact of mutual recognition and
answerability, our responsiveness to other persons, that shapes and makes possible our
personhood. “The more refined arts of personhood are learned as the personal pronouns
are learned, from the men and women, girls and boys, who are the learners’ companions
and play-mates. We come to recognize ourselves and others in mirrors, to refer to
ourselves and to other” (1991 13). Persons are self-conscious, know themselves to be
persons among persons. “Second person” is also meant to refer to the fact that our self-
consciousness is connected to being addressed as “you.” As Baier explains, “If never
addressed, if excluded from the circle of speakers, a child becomes autistic, incapable of
using any pronouns or indeed any words at all. The second person, the pronoun of mutual
address and recognition, introduces us to the first and third…” (1985 90). It is in fact in
the learning from others that we acquire a sense of our place in a series of persons, to
some of whom we have special responsibilities. “We acquire a sense of ourselves as
occupying a place in an historical and social order of persons, each of whom has a
personal history interwoven with the history of a community” (1985 90).
Baier’s approach to personhood bears strong affinities with feminist discussions of
personhood, mothering, and gender. Her emphasis on interdependence, on the embodied
nature of human beings, the long dependence of infants on, typically, mothers for their
care, the primacy given to intersubjectivity and responsibility is mirrored in Nancy
Chodorow’s appropriation of object relations theory to account for the development of
gender roles, Nancy Hartsock’s discussion of abstract masculinity in the context of
feminist standpoint theory, Carol Gilligan’s account of women’s development of self and
morality, Evelyn Fox Keller’s discussions of women and science, and many others.
Central to each of these approaches is a recognition of the mutually interdependent
relation between parent and child, the role of this relationship in constituting the self, and
the centrality of women’s caring labor to both. As Hilary Rose observes, the production
of people is qualitatively different from the production of things (83). Rose argues in
“Hand, Brain, and Heart” for a feminist reconceptualization of science and technology
which makes room for women’s work—reproduction. Women’s work involves, Rose
22
argues, caring labor—the labor of love. “For without love, without close interpersonal
relationships, human beings, and it would seem especially small human beings, cannot
survive” (83).
These same themes, too, are suggested by Star Trek’s portrayal of the characters Data,
the Doctor, and Seven of Nine. Rather than holding the android, the virtual being, or the
cyborg up as a model for how human beings might evolve in the 23rd
century, Star Trek
implicitly suggests an alternative model in terms of which human socialization, the
process of becoming second persons, becomes the model for how technology ought to
evolve. Rather than proposing that human beings emulate the technological, Star Trek
implicitly suggests that the technological emulate the human and that we approach
marginal, technological artifacts from a human point of view. What are the implications
of this for the human-machine interface? I take up this issue provisionally and
speculatively in the next, concluding section.
IV
Earlier in this essay I suggested that one of the central preoccupations of the late
twentieth century, a preoccupation sure to continue into the twenty-first century, concerns
the human-machine interface. Is the boundary between human and machine blurring? Are
human beings soon to be superceded by their mechanical creations? Is the human
morphing into the posthuman, a networked, perhaps virtual, cyborg? I have also argued
that this issue has been a central preoccupation of Star Trek throughout its three decades
and many incarnations. Star Trek, though, avoids the simplistic dichotomies present in
many of the contemporary analyses of this issue. Star Trek neither opts for the kind of
techno-enthusiasm associated with Moravec’s or Kurzweil’s giddy accounts of the
coming of the posthuman or the techno-phobia associated with films such as the
Terminator series or the philosophical analyses of the Dreyfus brothers or Alan Wolfe.
Rather, Star Trek is perhaps suggesting that there is a way to negotiate the complex
boundary issues caught up in the human-machine interface. Star Trek, at least on this
reading, seems to be suggesting that if we adopt a different approach to technology
23
perhaps we can successfully negotiate the difficult terrain that exists between humans and
machines.
Accounts of the human-machine interface that either argue for an essential difference and
inseparable gap between human beings and technology or collapse the human into the
technological, never sufficiently question either what it means to be human or the nature
of technology. They too quickly either pose the difference or collapse one into the other,
usually, in the case of the celebration of the cyborg or the posthuman, the human into the
technological. In some respects, Star Trek avoids this dichotomy and suggests that were
we to rethink both categories, we might be able to better navigate the boundary between
them. While Star Trek has been criticized for its adherence to an Enlightenment model of
human nature (see, for instance, many of the essays collected in Harrison, et al.), implicit
in the show’s dealings with marginal, technological beings is an understanding of the
nature of second personhood which suggests that human beings are interdependent,
ineluctably social, embodied beings. Star Trek’s portrayal of the socialization process of
Data, the Doctor, and Seven of Nine recapitulates the process each of us went through in
developing what Baier has called “the arts of personhood.” Importantly, Star Trek
regularly complicates these “arts” by showing us different cultures and civilizations with
their different understandings of the arts of personhood. From this perspective, Star Trek
avoids locating our essence in some fixed, ahistorical, universal nature and suggests a
more developmental, dynamic view of our humanity. Such a view of human nature is
more open to the ever shifting, dialectical relationship between nature and culture, human
and machine, and so would not draw the boundaries between the two so sharply. Over the
course of its more than 25 years, Star Trek indicates the manner in which the human-
machine interface is a shifting one, a gap which must continually be examined and
probed as technology and culture evolves.
Beyond rethinking a traditional notion of human nature, equally if not more importantly,
Star Trek also rethinks the nature of technology, insisting, perhaps, on what might be a
more feminist understanding of technology. The antagonism between human and
machine at the core of many accounts of the human-machine interface is perhaps driven
24
by the otherness of technology, its seeming foreignness to the naturalness of the human
being. But perhaps that foreignness is due to an overly mechanical and overly masculine
view of the nature of technology as mere product and tool. From this perspective, the
radical otherness of technology is located in its utter lack of socialization, the fact that it
is a mere product or tool of human ingenuity. It cannot serve as a model for us, as it
clearly demands that we leave behind our humanity. In TOS this is clearly seen in its
many portrayals of artificial intelligence. Technology which is overly rational, rigid,
autonomous, instrumental, must be resisted as a model for humanity. Perhaps, though, if
technology is approached from the perspective of the arts of personhood we wouldn’t
find the boundaries between us and them, human and machine, to be so problematic.
Perhaps the real question that Star Trek raises is the question of how the boundary
between human being and machine is to be negotiated. When the boundary is negotiated
in a more “humane” way, through the development of a socialized, interdependent
relationship with marginal beings such as Data, Seven of Nine, and the Doctor, it is not
so much feared as approached with curiosity.
This approach to technology, which I have suggested Star Trek implicitly avows, has its
analogues in several recent examples of feminist reconceptualizations of technology. In
Feminism Confronts Technology, Judy Wajcman argues that it is a mistake to approach
technology merely as a tool. Technology is a culture, and we must critically analyze the
traditional patriarchal culture of which it is a part and recognize that “[t]he evolution of a
technology is thus the function of a complex set of technical, social, economic, and
political factors” (23). Wacjman contends that we need to rethink the culture in which
technology is both produced and functions, a culture in which technology comes to
embody patriarchal values. We need to reconceive technology based on women’s values.
Wajcman argues that “technological change is starved of the so-called female values such
as intuition, subjectivity, tenacity, and compassion” (18). Alison Adams, in Artificial
Knowing: Gender and the Thinking Machine, is critical of work in artificial life, artificial
intelligence, and robotics for presupposing masculine, competitive, rationalist,
individualist models of human life and ignoring that human beings function as members
of a social group, have a shared culture, and forms of embodiment that generally require
25
looking after and caring for other bodies. Adams asks of Rodney Brook’s project COG,
the attempt to build an artificial person: “Who will take Cog shopping or to the park? Is
Cog to be brought up as a boy or a girl? Will he or she see that mommies do all the
nurturing work and hold the household together while daddies are absent, at work or
elsewhere? Will Cog get a Barbie or an Action Man for Christmas?” (133). Adams cites
the work of Harry Collins as an important corrective to the standard approach. Drawing
on his critique of expert systems, Adams maintains that the “interpretive asymmetry and
the associated brittleness of expert systems can only be overcome by computers sharing
our forms-of-life and he cannot imagine their achieving this as things now stand. They
would have to do it in some different and perhaps currently unimaginable way” (83).
Collins has stressed the importance of growing up and learning to be part of a culture and
to be intelligent, to understand and to have knowledge within that cultural setting. Adams
suggests that these technologies must emerge from a position of situatedness within a
culture. As a final example of this alternative approach to technology, we might briefly
consider Marge Piercy’s feminist appropriation of cyberpunk themes in He, She and It,
which tells the story of Shira Shipman’s socialization of the cyborg Yod. Shira has been
hired by the brilliant roboticist Avram to help with the programming of his latest cyborg
creation Yod. Avram has created a series of cyborgs, but all of them have failed. It is not
until Avram brings in Shira and her grandmother, Malkah, who is also a programmer,
that they are successful in creating an artificial being. Shira and Malkah’s contribution to
Yod’s programming takes the form of socialization, and it is only through this process of
socialization that Yod is able to survive where the previous robots and cyborgs were not.
It is by learning how to love and care for others, address and be addressed by others, that
Yod comes to understand what it means to be human. And in the process of socializing
Yod and ultimately coming to love him, Shira too learns something of what it means to
be human. The process Yod moves through, modeled on an explicitly feminist model by
Piercy, is strikingly similar to the process of socialization through which Data, the
Doctor, and Seven of Nine move. It is the process of becoming a second person.
Wajcman, Adams, and Piercy support the contention that a technology born of a different
culture, a feminist rather than patriarchal culture, will be a technology that is socialized
and situated, embodied and embedded.
26
Star Trek shares with these more explicitly feminist models, an understanding that
embracing technology need not lead to the “end of man” or the posthuman. Both the fear
and the hope that it will are premised upon mistaken views of both the human and the
machine. Rather, Star Trek implicitly suggests that it is possible to re-negotiate the
human-machine interface in such a way as to both preserve the arts of personhood and
understand and appreciate our relationship to our technological artifacts.
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