Okay but really a Rinch adult college AU really needs to be a thing
In which Harold Finch is a university professor teaching courses on computer science who’s also teaching a course on the Ethics of Technology that’s crosslisted with the Philosophy Department, and he has a really unique approach where he does teach you computer science/how to code, but then he makes you code programs as a way to think through their ethical and logistical implications. Like, “go code this self driving car. If it’s about to crash into another car who do you save? How do you write it making that decision?” or “go write this data analysis program, but I”m not going to tell you what to do about privacy, you get to decide if the program looks for incriminating key words or at every piece of text.” Etc… And he gives them readings about ethics and stuff, and news articles about advances in technology and their ethical implications from tech/science magazines, and makes them write responses to them. (Okay can you tell I am an academic, I would kill to take this kind of class, but it’s so wildly interdisciplinary that no university would actually ever go for it but I can dream)
And John, who’s just returned from military service and his multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq (where he got to see first-hand the advances in military technology and their “ethical consequences” and he has a lot of opinions on drones and automatic targeting systems and robots that do the fighting for you), decides to finally get his degree (because he went straight into the military after high school, no college for him, his family didn’t have the money for it and he had ideals back then, enough of them to sign up to ‘serve his country’). And he decides to try taking this class - he thinks it’s likely going to be taught by some stuck up ivory tower professor who’s never been in a war zone and hasn’t ever experienced the consequences of a lot of dangerous technological innovations firsthand. But he decides to give “Professor Finch” a chance, just on the off-chance that he’s not like that.
And on the first day of class, Harold Finch impresses him so much by walking in and confronting them with the ethics of every piece of technology in the classroom. He points at a kindle reader a student is doing her reading on and says “you don’t own any of the books on there. Think about it. You have an entire library you’ve paid for, that can be remotely deleted. Think about the implications of controlling information like that.” He points to a smartphone and says “do you store your photos in the cloud? Do you think about who has access to them?” He points at an apple computer and asks what the guy thinks about the FBI wanting a backdoor into apple technology. He points at the “green environmentally friendly” light switch that’s supposed to turn the lights off when there’s nobody in the room and talks about the consequences of smart homes. And basically, he makes it clear that he’s not just some hoity toity philosopher reading Nietzsche and being all doom-and-gloom about it to sound smart, he really does understand the consequences of the technology around him and thinks about it on a regular basis, and speaks of it with such gravitas. but he’s also not doing that “you millenials and your smartphones” shtick that John has always rolled his eyes at, instead, he takes a cautious approach of “technology can be wonderful and terrible depending on how you use it.” And John absolutely loves it. It becomes his favorite class.
And he finds that he likes coding, too. He’s not as good at it as most people in the class - his skills lie elsewhere - but he’s not bad at it, and he enjoys it. He likes thinking through the problems and analyzing them. He’s very tactical about it, drawing on his military training to provide solutions, but there’s always a touch of something indescribably “human” in his code. Harold finds that he loves it - John’s assignments are his favorite to grade. John is meticulous - he comments and annotates his code exactly as he’s supposed to, and his if-then loops are carefully thought out so that the program never gets stuck in an endless loop, and his variables are clearly defined. But there’s also something in the code that shows that John has really thought about the problem, that he hasn’t taken the easiest solution that so many students take (yeah, let’s just read all the emails and analyze all the data, or “yeah, let’s kill the smaller number of people in the self-driving car”) And John’s code isn’t like that, it’s not like a sledgehammer like that. He always tries - goes out of his way, really - to go beyond simple “if-then” protocols and writes really really elaborate programs. Like, he realizes the necessity that a self-driving car might have to make choices about people’s lives, and who lives and who dies, for example, but he really really struggles with it, because it’s not just numbers and statistics to him. And Harold can see that.
And basically as wildly unlikely as this might be I really love the idea of Harold falling in love with John through his code, because it shows his personality and his ethics. It shows how much he struggles with the ethical choices of the assignments Harold sets for them - which, really, is the entire point, and one a large portion of the class has missed. And John isn’t a brilliant coder - sometimes his code takes a roundabout approach to something that Harold could’ve done in a couple of lines of code - but his code has a humanity in it that Harold infinitely appreciates. (and basically I am still not over the irony of Harold being so, so good at computers/machines/technology and yet having so little trust for them). And so he falls in love with John through something he knows well - coding and computers - but because John’s put that human element back in there that Harold is always looking for.
And of course there’s a class on the ethics of military technology (if I were being really self-indulgent I would say that Harold makes the star trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon” and/or Ender’s Game optional reading for that class). They talk about drones, obviously, and remote targeting systems, and nuclear weapons, and all the other sub-atomic weapons that can kill so many people in so little time, and the fact that you can now basically fight battles remotely (literally kind of like Ender’s Game). And of course most of the sheltered kids in the class are kind of “well you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette” and “yeah innocent people get hurt but in the end we’re doing good” and John just sits there listening to it grimly before interrupting. And he does it in that calm, cool, low John Reese voice that makes him sound like he’s been to hell and back. And he asks, “how would you feel if your life were just a number in a video game some general is playing somewhere? Because I’ve been there. I’ve been that number on a screen, sent into battle by someone sitting in a comfortable room on American soil somewhere.” And the whole classroom just falls silent. Or, “do you know how long it takes someone to die once they’ve been shot with X kind of weapon? It doesn’t kill them right away, they scream for hours unless you look them in the eyes and put them out of their misery.” And basically John is just haunted by the war, and somehow Harold, even though he’s never seen war himself, understands John - maybe because Harold has spent a lot of time thinking about the ethical implications of what John’s experienced firsthand and doesn’t take it lightly. (I have a lot of feelings about the ethics of military technology and they’re all encapsulated by a Star Trek episode from 1967).
And there are so many possibilities for this. With the required angst, of course, because Harold’s a professor and John’s a student and it wouldn’t be ethical (haha) to take advantage of him like that, and even after the class is over (university policy allows students to date former professors) he angsts and worries about it, and besides even if it’s allowed why would John ever want him anyway, after everything John’s seen and been through what could Harold, in his sheltered academic life, give John? (the answer, as it turns out, is precisely that “normal” life that John’s never had, but also understanding, which he almost never got because most people can’t imagine what it’s like over there, being deployed, and just give him looks of pity. Harold doesn’t pity him.) And John and Harold bonding because they’re both outcasts - Harold has a rather unique take on teaching and interdiscplinary classes and computer science and ethics and doesn’t get along with most professors, and John is decidedly not a civilian trying to be one. But it’s the two of them being outsiders that allows them to connect so well, because Harold doesn’t think the way other people do and doesn’t react to John the way other people do, and John admires and respects Harold instead of judging him or laughing at his eccentricities.
John eventually works up the nerve to go to office hours - he’s a little star struck by Professor Finch so it takes a while - but once he does he ends up staying there hours beyond the scheduled office hours. They start by talking about computer science and the most recent class, but then Harold starts asking John about himself, and John has a lot of really interesting insights into both technology and ethics that Harold loves to hear, and John loves the way Harold listens and seems to understand and it becomes a regular thing, with them just talking and talking and it’s probably going well beyond the bounds of student/professor relationships but it’s also just conversation, how bad could it be….
And after the class and exams and everything, Harold asks John if maybe he would like to continue their conversations even though he’s not taking the class anymore. And John, of course, says “yes.”
And basically John Reese bringing a much-needed dose of reality into the world of academia gives me life.
(also John and Harold totally bond over their love of sci-fi and nobody can tell me otherwise. And it’s just a bonus that sci-fi deals with the exact topic of Harold’s course and one evening it’s like 8pm and they’ve been there for hours and they’re arguing over some small socio-technological point in an Asimov novel).
( also @neverwhere you insisted on putting star trek in my POI posts and now I have a POI post with star trek references so you get tagged, I’m not even sorry)
(p.s. if anybody wants to add or embellish or even write this thing you have my full permission, goodness knows I’m not going to end up doing it in the next year or ten)
