Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (1968) By Philip K. Dick

"You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe."

The philosophy of this book is especially intriguing to me because, written in 1968, Philip K. Dick would have been at the heart of a century in which technology took over humanity's existence.

He tells a remarkable tale of the threat that technology poses to life, in that, the more reliant we are on technology, the less alive we truly are.

In essence, therefore, we are the androids of which he writes. Almost alive, but not quite. However, the story also shows our protagonist's gradual acceptance of a new reality, in which technology advances exponentially, beyond the human capability of true understanding.

The author's warning consequently is that our reliance on our own mechanical creations saps our ability to live as we are meant to. We lose our identity, we lose our soul. We become android.

"Owning and maintaining a fraud had a way of gradually demoralizing one."