Our Surragates

Over the weekend I watch the movie Surrogates. The basic premise is that in the future all of humanity is living through surrogates - robots that are controlled from their homes through a machine hooked to their brains. Every “person” outside working, shopping, running, etc. is actually a surrogate, and all the humans are inside their houses controlling them. The surrogates could look any way their owner wanted. Some people opted for a “surry” that looked just like them, others chose to use a surry that had the physical improvements they always wanted (better hair line, slimmer figure, younger face, etc.) and some chose to have a surry of a completely different race and gender than themselves. These robots are how people in the world of the film "live" life.

This sounds crazy doesn’t it? You’d think, why would someone want to sit at home and live through a robot? But you know what happened directly after the movie? The four of us watching the film (myself, my husband, my mom, and her boyfriend) all sat on the couch on 3 iPhones and an iPad. I looked around and realized that the movie wasn’t so far fetched at all. While we weren’t plugged into a robot through our brains we were plugged in through our phones, communicating with others and playing games. We were living through technology.

We already have surrogates. We’re living through various avatars and screen names. Communicating through electronic versions of ourselves. We’re not really too far from the world of the film if you think about it.

Is that scary to anyone?

P.S.- Surrogates was a great film.