Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3086-3090 (9th to 13th November 2015)
BenRG:
--- Quote from: J on 12 Nov 2015, 08:47 ---in comic-time, that 'long struggle' from pets to citizens has been what, 18 months or so?
--- End quote ---
That's a good question; we don't know how long ago this happened or how long ago sentient AIs were invented. We know that Station existed long enough ago that he was able to be Hannelore's best friend when she was around 13-ish (about 10 years ago, in-universe). Station also noted that most of Elicott-Chatham Industries' major in-house AIs were named by Hannelore at around this time (and that she was very literal in her name choices).
However, I can't see Dr Elicott-Chatham allowing an experimental AI to work with his severely mentally-disturbed daughter, so it is possible that AIs existed long before that in the QC-verse; long enough for the doctor to have confidence in Station's stability and his ability to handle Hannelore's needs. It is quite possible that the main human characters went through their entire teen and college years with AIs and Synthetics being an everyday part of life and AI civil rights being the hot-button campus debate flashpoint during their freshman and sophomore years. Sam, on the other hand, is young enough that a world without Synthetics as her everyday neighbours and peers is as strange to her as the stories I hear from my older relatives of Britain before the large-scale West Indian immigration of the 1950s and 1960s.
Given the number of Synthetics we see who still have pet-like functions and attitudes, I'd say that a major rights shake-up that occurred around 5-8 in-universe years ago is plausible in story terms. Certainly recent enough that some humans still resent Synthetics being considered equal to people and recently enough that some Companion Synthetics still think 'pet'.
Certainly recently enough that Bubbles may remember hearing some in her chain of command criticising her squad-buddies for befriending her as it was like 'personifying your squad's Hummer or something'.
J:
actually, if i can be permitted to enjoy a bit of a meta-moment, the progression in the depiction of the robot characters in QC has been kind of an interesting case-study in the evolution of long-form fiction & how it changes along with the author. the Anthro-PCs were originally just silly comic relief sidekicks who existed to offset some of the strip's heavy drama & make technology related puns. but at some point it seems jeph started thinking a bit more deeply about the fictional world he had created and the roll of the machine-men within it. their narrative roll in the story shifted to reflect their social roll in the setting.
then at some point, i think jeph started thinking about things a bit more about the sociopolitical & philosophical ramifications of AI, and the depiction shifted again to reflect that.
makes me wonder if we'll ever see 'ol PT410X again. how would he fit into the new narrative paradigm?
MrWoodchip:
I was reading through some of the archive and I happened upon this strip: http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=668, so I guess it really has been less than 2 years since AI got equal rights.
I also can't remember enough HTML to embed the link in text.
Kugai:
So much for her Lawyer then.
osaka:
Her Lawyer clearly has no idea how to lawyer properly.
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