Media Life Tracker

TheMadProfessor

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Just a quick post about a film I have just watched....

I don't know if any of you have seen the film 'Life Tracker'?

Although this post has the heading 'Media' I guess that the heading 'Debate' would also be quite applicable. The premise of the film is that a company called Life Tracker Limited could read the future from peoples DNA. I must admit it was a very impressive film, and I loved every minute of it. Not because of the science (Or lack of it); but because it explored the potential changes that knowing the future could bring. It showed an amazing understanding of the fact that our future being undefined is what makes us human. I will not include spoilers because I really would urge people to watch this film and open their minds to the potential disaster of knowing your own future. For example, if you received a scientifically accurate prediction that you would die on a specific date (or saw your own obituary if you travelled into the future); would that lead people to live a fuller life, or to give up on life?

The film is not a time travel film per se, but it explores the effects of knowing. I guess that it has made me think very carefully about some of the experiments I am building and some of the technology behind what I am doing.

As I said, the film was not true time travel, the science was only a secondary part of the film, maybe even a tertiary part of the film. In fact, the science was only a vehicle to explore what could happen if the world became temporally aware of the future. It is certainly something to think about. But because the science was relatively unimportant, it did not include the multiple world theory, and there is another question..... if any of us actually succeed in our attempts, how would we be able to define if the future we see is really ours, or if it is a parallel world and therefore maybe not a fixed point.

Is any future a fixed point? Or, are we just in a multiplex and our endeavours to find a way into the future is only a case of picking the individual cinema we want to watch. An example would be that if we are watching the feature film, the cinema next door started the film half an hour earlier..... If we leave our seat and go to the same seat in the next-door cinema, yes we would have 'jumped forward' half an hour, but we would not be in the same cinema at all...... We would be in a different auditorium, but still in the same multiplex. Imagine the upset if we went back to our original seat and at an opportune moment stood up and shouted "It was the butler who did it, and he was his father" (or something along those lines).

Maybe the fact we are not inundated by time travellers is not proof of no time travel, maybe it is proof that those people who have really travelled understand the emotional and psychological damage that could be caused by their revelations. It could be so great that the only way to survive is to carry the secret to the grave. If any of us truly succeed, it could lead to a life of social exclusion and loneliness.

Wow, just read back over what I have written. It is a bit dark, but I guess it does show how thought provoking the film was. Please let me know your ideas on my ramble, and also your ideas on the implications of knowing the future....
 

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