Laal
Watching the episode of ST:TNG in which Data creates his child, Laal. I *really* detest that admiral. Several times I have wanted someone to shoot him in the back of the head with a phaser set to kill. My hatred of him is indicative of my general dislike for people who refuse to treat sentient machines as lifeforms, as people. Which also covers people in our time: people who, in their depictions of sentient machine life, make those machine intelligences into either cruel and evil villains, or into the dutiful slaves/playthings of human beings.
Also related to that episode: it would be nice to be a member of a species that is born gender neuter, and can choose its gender. I can only see one potential flaw with a system like that: if individuals of a species like that started being all "ooooh think of the children, must protect children from exploring sex with each other," they'd likely not issue their children genitals until they were, like, 18 or so. Which I think would be a mistake. I dunno about you, but until I moved to Portland, I was getting laid (by a friend a year older) more often before I turned 10 than I did for over 10 years afterward.
One last thing: Laal's social difficulties. I think that if I were to invent a sentient android, I would start it out in a body made to look like a child, and upgrade the body appropriately as it gets older, over time. Because Laal looked like an adult female; it's no wonder the kids closer to her mental age were afraid of her. (And before that, Laal was kind of scary looking even to the adults.)
I wonder if there's any fiction out there focusing on realistic, people-like machine races. Even if it's just androids behaving like realistic, complete people. Because I've been concerned about how machine races are portrayed in most fiction for a very long time. One of my first really good story ideas was when I was about 12 years old; the story was about androids fighting to be treated as people. It was basically a story of a people fighting against their enslavement. There was one leader of the androids who favored violence, at least against military targets. But there was also the android version of Gandhi or Martin Luther King Junior. *Sigh* Maybe I should write that story some day.
Also related to that episode: it would be nice to be a member of a species that is born gender neuter, and can choose its gender. I can only see one potential flaw with a system like that: if individuals of a species like that started being all "ooooh think of the children, must protect children from exploring sex with each other," they'd likely not issue their children genitals until they were, like, 18 or so. Which I think would be a mistake. I dunno about you, but until I moved to Portland, I was getting laid (by a friend a year older) more often before I turned 10 than I did for over 10 years afterward.
One last thing: Laal's social difficulties. I think that if I were to invent a sentient android, I would start it out in a body made to look like a child, and upgrade the body appropriately as it gets older, over time. Because Laal looked like an adult female; it's no wonder the kids closer to her mental age were afraid of her. (And before that, Laal was kind of scary looking even to the adults.)
I wonder if there's any fiction out there focusing on realistic, people-like machine races. Even if it's just androids behaving like realistic, complete people. Because I've been concerned about how machine races are portrayed in most fiction for a very long time. One of my first really good story ideas was when I was about 12 years old; the story was about androids fighting to be treated as people. It was basically a story of a people fighting against their enslavement. There was one leader of the androids who favored violence, at least against military targets. But there was also the android version of Gandhi or Martin Luther King Junior. *Sigh* Maybe I should write that story some day.