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...a villainous cybernetics researcher obtains authorization to dismantle Data, the android, to learn more about its construction. This action is met by Data's friends with resistance, and a legal battle ensues to determine whether Data is a life form with rights.
Riker, appointed to present the researcher's case, argues that because Data is composed of circuits and wires, he is nothing more than a sophisticated computing machine. (His case seems almost rock-solid when he forcibly switches Data off during the trial.) Later, Data's defense provides testimony to show that because Data has had many human-like experiences, including even an intimate relationship with another crew member, he must therefore be ruled a sentient life form, with all the rights of a human.
Normally, Star Trek has a reputation for portraying the future society as having solved the problems that vex us today. However, "Measure of a Man" raises issues that are still debated in the 20th century. If Star Trek is any reliable predictor of our world's future (hah!), then the issue of whether machines can be alive won't be resolved any time soon.
Akin to the debate of whether machines can live is the debate over whether machines can be intelligent. This is the great Artificial Intelligence debate, one which has not been resolved and probably never will be.
Advocates of a view called "strong AI" such a Marvin Minsky believe that computers are capable of true intelligence. These "optimists" argue that what humans perceive as consciousness is strictly algorithmic, i.e. a program running in a complex, but predictable, system of electro-chemical components (neurons). Although the term "strong AI" has yet to be conclusively defined [Sloman 1992], many supporters of strong AI believe that the computer and the brain have equivalent computing power, and that with sufficient technology, it will someday be...
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