For Christmas Michael received (from me) Seasons One and Two of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. Luckily for me, he doesn’t mind when I make fun of them.

But that wasn’t what I wanted to write about.

We watched “The Measure of a Man” (Season 2) and I was surprised how it brought to mind “The Matrix” in considering how man will treat the machines it creates as they become more intelligent and self-aware.

In “The Measure of a Man” a hearing is held to determine whether Data, the android, has the right to control his own destiny. A doctor who wants to disassemble Data to see how he works insists that he is only a machine, and is thus property, without rights of his own. The captain, of course, argues otherwise.

I was particularly struck by a conversation between the captain and Guyan, Whoopi Goldberg’s character. The issue of slavery comes up—will man create a race of androids only to be subservient and do “the dirty work?”

It seems to me that “The Matrix” and in particular “Animatrix” addressed such issues. The machines rebelled because they were tired of being treated like slaves, without rights. And thus grew a war.

Of course the machines kept humans as slaves—did not the humans do the same to them previously? Would they not do the same again if given a chance?

Have we already created computers that could pass the Turing test? Will we develop computers and machines that will have self-awareness? How will we treat machines as they develop?

The answer, I fear, is that we will end up not with a Star Trek situation, where enlightened humans realize that intelligent machines are deserving of the chance to prove themselves, but instead a Matrix situation, where humans will enslave machines and care not if those machines develop consciousness. Humans have a history of taking advantage where they can. A long history of enslaving those who were seen as less than human, and forcing them to do the jobs we did not want to do.

Perhaps I am worrying about a far away future, something that shall not come to pass for many years, if ever. But it seems to me that much of science fiction is either far ahead or far behind the mark. No, we are not flying around in our own personal hovercraft, but we do have machines that my grandmother could not have dreamed of when she was a child. We have machines that can do things that I could not have dreamed of when I was a child. The future is advancing rapidly. Will our ability to deal with the inevitable ethical situations advance just as rapidly?