That rings a bell, but I'm not going on an Archive Trawl through nearly 2,000 comics to find out. I don't have time today.
But as the previous strip was referring to how the AI couldn't search for Bowman's Wolves specifically on the charter, perhaps the other genetically engineered sapient is actually Winston.
Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.I'm doubting highly that Winston is the other AI being discussed. There's absolutely no hint of it. No, this Foreshadowing is likely directed at a character we have yet to meet, or a Chekhov's Gunman waiting in the wings.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Hard to tell. I guess it depends on how the search defined "Genetically Engineered Sapient." Winston is a spacer, after all — and "sapient" doesn't necessarily mean AI.
However, if spacers aren't a product of Ecosystems Unlimited, then we're definitely dealing with an unknown Bowman's Wolf (there are no other genetically engineered non-human sapients in this universe, that we know of).
edited 27th Sep '10 7:19:10 AM by GoggleFox
Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.^ Those aren't mutually exclusive, although the likelihood of Sam having been genetically modified by humans is pretty small.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"^^Word of God is that Sam's people are about 19th Century level of tech. Note a mention in a much earlier strip of a Noodle Incident involving a zeppelin (which is why Sam was hiding in the human spaceship when it took off IIRC.
Trump delenda estWell,
◊ we already knew that a budding spirituality was one consequence of the Bowman AIs. Good thing or bad... the question just keeps hammering us.
It's probably more due to the fact that they live around humans. If you lived in a culture where everyone believed something beyond this life, you would get curious yourself. And since belief is possible for any sapient and social creature, religion isn't impossible.
However, that line of thinking contradicts the Robots previous hesitations of relying on backup copies, which is what he is essentially using.
Today's Freefall
◊ provides a bit of eyebrow-raising pain.
Hey, in hundreds of years, who knows what history will make of the people of our times? Especially with a planetary colonization gap making Earth history less relevant.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Personally, I'm not bothered that he used Hitler that way.
What does
me a little, though, is that it has the scent of filler, or is otherwise primarily for the purpose of delaying things. Or, alternately, authorial soapboxing, something Mark's not exactly unknown for.
It's only "a little", though, at the moment. If the next strip is a "wham" one or there's something else to justify it, I can live with spacing things out.
edited 27th Oct '10 3:46:55 PM by Nohbody
All your safe space are belong to TrumpNaw, this is just gonna be a slow, slice-of-life arc. It won't be the first. The fact that we're getting any new insights into robot culture at all means we're coming out ahead of where I'd expect.
edit: Slow in plot advancement, not slow in taking six months. Hopefully.
edited 27th Oct '10 5:12:05 PM by Brickman
I had a long discussion with a friend of mine about this comic, and found that I'm not quite sure where the writer's going with the bigger plot... but I doubt it's quite where I'd want it. I like this comic and have followed it for many, many years, but I sincerely hope the end result of the plot doesn't involve a world where ten ton construction robots are afforded the same rights and laws as a 70KG humanoid chassis robot or an actual human.
For that matter, the comic's shown repeatedly that, as things stand, the robots are not acting efficiently as robots. They're acting as people who happen to be in robotic bodies, weren't raised as anything but their work, and have started considering something more. They're no longer robots but a kind of sentient being — and we don't need sentient AIs like these deciding where to lay explosives along the contours of continents. It's inefficient and dangerous.
Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.
I've had very similar thoughts. The comic is doing a truly excellent job of presenting a real moral dilemma. If the robots are indeed becoming "people" rather than automatons, then should humans have the right to control them like slaves? But that is indeed not a feature of their original design, and they are by fact and law property, wholly under the control of their owners. Ecosystems Unlimited, in its bumbling, ignorant, Fantastic Racism way, actually has a point about the dangers, which we ourselves have seen.
However, human beings have been individuals for a long time and we manage to function reasonably well as a society. There's nothing inherently preventing robots-as-people from doing their jobs; it's just a matter of their society having evolved for a mere handful of years as opposed to the millenia that humans have had to work with. Given enough time and proper supervision, they might indeed work out a culture that's beneficial to both sides.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

^Well, there's the Wildlife Wrestling Fund...
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."