Identity, Memory Technology & Pop Culture

It's officially a trend. During the past three television seasons, there have been at least three different shows that deal with the topic of personal identity, how it constructed/defined, whether it must be organic, and whether it can be molded, suppressed or permanently modified without the active participation of the identity. These are important issues because medical science is developing drugs which can affect memory, and other enhancements from nanotechnology to genetic-specific performance enhancers may be around the corner. The specific shows I am referencing are: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse, Heroes.

These themes were explored by Gibson in the characters of Johnny Mnemonic and others. Bret Easton Ellis explores the topic most deeply in American Psycho and Glamorama though it can be argued these themes emerged first in Less than Zero and Rules of Attraction. Millions of people have read the novels of Gibson and Ellis. Millions more have seen the three television shows listed above.

Descartes said "Cogito Ergo Sum" (I think therefore I am. But he could never resolve what he was through reason alone. Quato (from Total Recall) tells Quaid "A Man is What He Does," implying that memories do not define an individual's identity and that all you have to do to be different is to act differently. John Locke and the school of Virtue Centered Ethics also have strong opinions on the matter. Then there is the historical of case of Martin Guerre - was the impostor who returned immediately from war with more accurate memories "more Martin Guerre" than the "real" Martin Guerre who returned later with blurrier memories and whose wife disavowed him?

In Dollhouse, the characters have custom designed identities implanted onto a tabula rasa created once the original identity is scanned, downloaded and stored. Each individual person has multitudes of identities downloaded into them over the course of their five year contracts. The Sarah Connor Chronicles plays with ideas of predestination and fate, and whether John Connor is allowed to have an identity separate from that given to him from the future. More importantly, HOW does he develop the identity he will need to lead the human resistance in the future. Heroes deals with the concepts of how identity changes along with abilities, as well as similar issues of predestination when Hiro Nakamura returns to the past and tries to convince his historical childhood idol to become the person celebrated in stories to this day.

It will be interesting to see how long popular culture continues to wrestle with these issues in television, and whether shows that do remain successful.