Connections - Klara and the Sun / BR 2049 || English

Vocabulary/Definitions:
Nascent - Coming into existence; displaying signs of future potential.

Uncanny Valley - The unsettling feeling of robots/AI closely resembling humans in many ways but are not quite exactly there.
Leitmotif - A dominant, recurring theme.
Algorithmic - Using mathematical instructions to calculate an answer.
Refutation - Action of proving a statement/theory to be untrue/false

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Important themes/ideas that Klara and the Sun raise include the fact of being inhuman according to society, and also the fact that someone had created that inhuman... human. It touches on the idea of whether machines are able to feel, and are dehumanised in a society. Klara feels emotions, where the common person may think otherwise. Where the other AFs experience emotion at the same level Klara does, I do not know (however, she is incredibly observant). But she can empathise. The people around her (not seeming to know how rude it is) seem to treat her like an object, an appliance. This isn't fair for her because she feels emotions at the same level--or more than--a human can.

The Atlantic article and what I learnt from it:

The writer of the article for The Atlantic considers that Klara has more humanity than most humans; calling it superhuman humanity.

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Articles used:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/01/klara-and-the-sun-by-kazuo-ishiguro-review-another-masterpiece

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/kazuo-ishiguro-klara-and-the-sun/618083/

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A connection I have drawn so far between Blade Runner 2049 and Klara and the Sun involves the concept of discrimination in terms of the 'lifted' and 'unlifted' individuals in Klara but also the Replicants in Blade Runner. Unlifted individuals in Klara are often seen as the 'genetically inferior', not being as smart as the lifted. They are not smart as the lifted, the ones who were genetically edited to become superior in society. Humans who are unlifted have a lesser chance of getting into good education and advancing. In Blade Runner 2049, it's almost the other way around, the replicants are also incredibly superior. They are made to be superior to everyone else in smarts and strengths and this results in the regular people who don't have this sort of power detesting these superior beings. 

Another connection I have drawn was the fact that they are both set in a dystopia that also involves environmental decay. A time in the future; when something has gone wrong. In Klara and the Sun, society has advanced to where it is possible to create artificial life to keep kids company where they may not be able to go outside often as there is an immense amount of pollution keeping them in. Klara's main goal is to shut down this pollution so she can fulfil the deal the made with the Sun and help make Josie better. In Blade Runner 2049, there is just about no life and there are also the superior Replicants that make it their sole duty to serve the authorities. The few that realise the wrongs and defy the higher-ups are the ones who are sentenced to death and are supposed to be killed by the Blade Runner.

My understanding of what it means to have personhood may have changed after reading Klara and the Sun and BR2049. To be honest, I don't think I even had a solidified view of it in the first place. I think that personhood is a concept of being able to think for yourself and the choices you make as an individual. Your morals.