You ever feel like there's some kind of really really useful technology for information processing that's just out of reach that we won't get because this pattern has been set :)

I don't know, something makes me feel sick about playing about with this kind of theme when apparently consideration for the humanity of real, biological human beings isn't even settled.

I've cooled on a lot of 'what if the androids are people too' type stories, not because I reject the idea that different kinds of intelligence are possible, but because often these stories assume that having a face, speaking with a human voice, are marks of humanity. Actually that's the easy part.

-instead we get a complete black box that kind of does whatever you ask it too with a chipper customer service representative voice and people are jumping at the opportunity to consider it sentient.

At least.

uhhh do guys like this have their hands on the controls of anything important?

My thinking was something like the mainland is just a bigger, unseen purgatory of inscrutable purpose. The workers and their managers don't even know how the factory works they just have orders to fill.

Bless, I'll take it

Not far from my idea: you explore the island over time combing the beach for trinkets to sell to the islanders and workers who arrive on a barge from the mainland once a week. When the tide is low you can reach sunken ruins around the shore. But yeah, population of a handful of weird creatures.

Super convenient, the local amenities (towering machine of unknown origin siphoning telluric energy from deep within the earth) are all within 15 minutes of your front door.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, I'll do my best.

This is exactly the experience I had some years ago when I made the switch- I thought I'd be making a concession or slight downgrade but as soon as I got over the initial hump I was like "why was I putting up with all that"