Data paints. Plays music. Deals poker. Drinks at the bar. Tells jokes (or tries to). Dances. Keeps secrets. He cares for his friends. He creates a child. He experiences romance, and loss. He has a cat. Yet, during seven seasons of network television, Data’s exact nature remains a strangely open ques
A thoughtful discussion on how the figure of the robot -- or this particular robot, Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation -- can help us to reflect upon what makes us human. As Baudrillard points out, the robot “is a worker” who is created to labor (Baudrillard 178). The author argues that what makes Data an interesting figure -- what makes him approach, and perhaps cross the boundary between the machine and the human -- is that he performs emotional labor, attending to the emotional needs of others. In other words, he cares.
This passage seems especially appropo for the situation we find ourselves in, especially since emotional labor is undervalued (or not valued at all):
“To be human is to be a member of a community, a crew, that cares for each other and works hard to take care of each other. Data, like all human women, has struggled to prove himself a sentient being in the eyes of the law, but this is only a necessary, not sufficient, condition for humanity. Data continually searches for his humanity by enacting and improving his performance of emotional labor, just as we too look for safety, security, friendship, and love by caring for the emotions of our families, colleagues, neighbors, and friends.”