Аннотация
Arthur Byron Cover
Prodigy
Isaac Asimov’s Robot City. Book 4The Sense Of Humor
by Isaac Asimov
Would a robot feel a yearning to be human?
You might answer that question with a counter-question. Does a Chevrolet feel a yearning to be a Cadillac?
The counter-question makes the unstated comment that a machine has no yearnings.
But the very point is that a robot is not quite a machine, at least in potentiality. A robot is a machine that is made as much like a human being as it is possible to make it, and somewhere there may be a boundary line that may be crossed.
We can apply this to life. An earthworm doesn't yearn to be a snake; a hippopotamus doesn't yearn to be an elephant. We have no reason to think such creatures are self-conscious and dream of something more than they are. Chimpanzees and gorillas seem to be self-aware, but we have no reason to think that they yearn to be human.
A human being, however, dreams of an aft...
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