Sometimes a Great Notion (Score 1)

Pseudo-science and Science Fiction are wonderful things to play with, but Clarke and others tend to take themselves too serious at times. Perhaps it goes with believing too much in their own rhetoric. The future of Man lies in overpopulation and the depletion of natural resources, followed by disease, war, and eventual barbarism. Perhaps the man of the future will sit in a cave with a battery powered lap top and search the remaining internet for some sign of intelligent life. Perhaps he will never find it.
Androids feeling pain is with us now, depending upon just how much merging of man and machine you want to consider. People walk around with all kinds of mechanical devices implanted in them today. Now if we were to start implanting human parts into machines, a real cross over could be accomplished. But any progressive thinking doctor would tell you that the elimination of pain is one of the primary goals in medical science, so why would future science create an android which would feel pain? Emotional pain perhaps, if such a thing could be made possible, but never physical pain.
http://www.xensei.com/users/jong/nedy.html

"Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." (Men readily believe what they want to believe) C. Julius Caesar, Commentarii de bello Gallico III, 18