Back in amongst the flotsam and jetsam of my recent near-flame-war, there popped up the notion of infants with implanted data links to provide multiple POVs external to their bodies. My supposition was that such infants would grow up to be - essentially - aliens. They would not be able to form a human-like sense of self, since they would be unable to differentiate between their own natural POV and the external ones.

I just realized that the Cylon "skin jobs" from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series are just such infants, all grown up. Sane (by Cylon standards) "skin jobs" don't see themselves as individuals but merely as an unremarkable iteration of their particular model, no more or less important than any other. It's only after extended contact with humans that some of these iterations begin to perceive themselves differently, to desire to live independently from the group consciousness, even to the point of actively rebelling and siding with the humans.

In fact, given that they can only be told from "real" humans through means of a extremely precise genetic test (including the obvious ability to interbreed), "skin jobs" ARE humans . . . just ones with a decidedly non-standard upbringing.  

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