TiMER

There's a semi-obscure film called TiMER, that I saw tonight. It's kind of cool. The basis of the film is that you can implant a sensor in your arm, and it will adapt and code an ideal match to yourself - based on whether or not someone enrolls or is present and already chipped.

It's interesting how things work, in this future world. People who are not chipped are thought of as beyond the pale - either not interested or not interesting. And people who are chipped have a tendency to check their timers first, and if they don't match - they disregard the relationship that they're in - because, after all - it's not really 'the one' , is it?

I liked the film, but I wondered aloud if the whole conscious aspect of choosing someone is really all of what it's supposed to be. Don't we more or less choose our mate, through an almost subconscious means? I mean, sure - we can try to rule out those that we don't think match - based on either this aspect of their personality, or that... but in the end.. don't we really just sort of trust our decision. Isn't the trust, the key element of the decision? And not just the decision itself?

TiMER is a fun film. It's easy to imagine how setting up impersonal relationships through the medium of online and social network based connectivity - can be a sort of parallel to the idea that we can trust there is someone out there that is "the one". Maybe there is no one for us. Why would that be a bad thing?

Maybe it's the part of us that trusts the decisions we make that is the important thing in us. And not just the part of us that makes them. If there was no one out there that was a perfect match - then perhaps there is someone out there that simply, just feels right. Maybe people are meant to grow old together, and change with each other. TiMER doesn't cover too much of the questions - the film deals mostly with the mechanics of what it might be like in a world where things like having a fixed , and ideal match - one that is located for you by some kind of network or computer program - that is infallible. And what it might mean to everyone in that world, as well as the few people in the world that just don't match to everyone. It's a neat film.