Technical+Info.


 * Some information on the technology used in the novel...**

Written in 1968, in the scheme of things Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a relatively recent book, and therefore has more realistic technical aspects.

__Conditions of the Dystopia:__ During World War Terminus, the earth was thrown into what amounts to a nuclear winter. Compared to most other distopias, this is very realistic. Only after WWII would an atomic holocaust become a possibility, and by the time the book was written, the Hydrogen Bomb, the atomic bomb’s big brother, was thoroughly tested, and the Cold War was going strong, furthering the imminence of this grisly end as a reasonable, even likely occurrence in the near future. The book expertly plays this out, with a darkened sky, and un-breathable sterilizing dust, which in the event of an actual nuclear war, would probably exist as fallout all over the earth.



__Androids & Electric Animals__: The technology for this definitely did not exist in 1968, nor does it exist now. Some parts of the android, like being able to artificially grow biological body parts is only currently being researched, and artificial intelligence hasn’t come close to resembling a humans’. In fact, no program has even come close to passing the Turing Test, used to test if an AI computer can resemble a human’s behavior. Even though the easily accessible androids of the book are a far cry from reality, many tech companies in Japan are doing their best to have life-like robots in the service industry, however these are extremely expensive, and cannot produce new ideas or make decisions, they need to be told what to do prior to operation.



__Voight-Kampff Test__: The author produced this piece of the puzzle to be able to actually distinguish between humans and androids. In the modern worlds, other than the Turing Test, there is the more computer-based CAPTCHA test, which stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” This of course doesn’t actually resemble the real Turing Test, which tests a computer’s reaction speed to math questions, etc. but just ensures that the operator of a computer is human instead of a program.

__Endangered Species__: Another more recent development is the general world concern for the extinction of species. This idea is taken to the extreme in the book where animals are very valuable, and almost sacred. This is very forward thinking on the part of the author, predicting something that is happening more and more severely every day.



__Empathy Simulation__: Mercerism and the quantitative measurement of empathy are some of the few things that have absolutely no basis on any real science. It seems like the author added these elements more on the basis his personal opinions about human nature, and not about his views on what the future would be like.