Pinocchio is just Frankenstein for kids. Our culture is rife with images of machines that wish to become men. Where are all the people who want to become machines?

A few people are already convinced that their bodies are being replaced. A common delusion among paranoid schizophrenics is that their flesh has begun to function as a receiver for messages from an outside power. Often this belief will be so profound that the patient is convinced that part of his/her body has been replaced by a physical device -- an implant, usually in the brain, through which the patient alone receives messages. This often causes them great torment, but eventually, they begin to listen to the the machine.

Machines can be controlled. They are amoral. As beings, they represent the antithesis of the western cultural values of free will motivated by informed moral conviction. So we enslave them, and like all masters we write stories about how all they ever want is to be more like us. No one would become a machine, because to replace flesh with durable polymers, and mind with winking optics, is to become a puppet to unseen powers.

Without stories to warn us, we're defenseless. Immortal, forever useful, mutably plastic in ideology and memory: the citizen of the future.

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