‘Round About Fetishism With Louise J. Kaplan by Adolfo Fattori

One need not be a performance artist to consider transforming one’s body into a cyber body. In the last chapter of Culture of Fetishism, I present the example Prof. of Cybernetics, Kevin Warwick (p. 163) who, in his book, I, Cyborg6 , described how he had his nervous system linked to a computer. The computer and he sent thought signals back and forth. He could switch on lights. he could manipulate a robotic hand directly from the neural signals he emitted, and even feel how much force the arm was using. using his neural signals, Warwick could control technology on the other side of the world. 
Similarly, when a New York City, reporter interviewed ordinary citizens who were plugged into their I Pods, cell phones, laptops, and other gadgets which they had to lug around on a daily basis, he found people who fantasized about having their nervous system hooked up to their machines.  One of these, a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, wished that someone would invent a brain implant that, “would be an ultimate interface between your nervous system and the larger accretive nervous system that you could switch on or off in different ways that would be constantly reconfigurable so that you wouldn’t have to upgrade it by buying a new one every six months.” (Cultures of Fetishism, p.176: Described briefly on p. 162, Falsi Idoli).

Connections between organic and artificial in the body have long been the focus of the debate on post-human. You mention the “three laws of robotics” by Isaac Asimov and show the reflections and predictions of cybernetics and scientists. But maybe the place where this theme reaches its focal point is the Blade Runner7 movie by Ridley Scott. What do you think about the way the problem is faced in the movie?
Yes, I agree with you that these questions about the relations between humans and robots reached a focal point in this fantastic film by Ridley Scott. Adapted from the Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?8 the film encourages viewers to sympathize with the artificial beings, the androids. This sympathy is evoked particularly by the plight of the replicant, Pris who is destroyed by the human, Deckard, the replicant hunter who acts under the belief that she like the other replicants has turned evil and dangerous.  Nevertheless, he falls in love with another replicant, Rachael. The visions of good and evil in this film follow the novel in that the androids are represented as more sensitive in their feelings and thoughts than the humans who despise, fear and hunt them. While Blade Runner does not illustrate any one principle of the fetishism strategy, the film demonstrates how the erotic and the violent aggressive trends in human beings are sometimes confounded in the name of law and order. In the novel and the film, the law of the land encourages the violence and anger of humans, who have lost their essential humanity by having to live in an empty world that has been deprived of moral conviction. It also illustrates that humans can be more violent and less humane than the androids that they create. In Blade Runner, the organic tends toward inhumanity and cruelty, while the artificial, the androids, can be more compassionate and humane. Blade Runner set a new perspective on the relations between humans and androids, a perspective that was followed by other films where the android is a sensitive and loving helper to humans - like Artificial Intelligence9 . On the other hand, more typical films like Terminator10 and Alien11 , emphasize the cruelty and aggression of the androids and the need for humans to destroy them.