Choice Blog 4: Doll House

For my fourth and final choice blog I have decided to write about the show “Doll House”. This show only went for two seasons, but it brings to light unethical technology that we could have in the future. Imagine being able to save someone’s memory on a hard drive and wiping that persons brain to a tabula rasa (yay AP Psych), which is the basis of the mind, and then being able to upload another person’s memory into another body. What is scary about this show is that based on the amount of progress scientists are making about the human brain, this technology could be reality one day. That would create a disaster. I think this show ended due to the unethical ideals the show produced. I think it scared people, which it should.

So in this show, there is a secret illegal organization that has this brain technology and offers their “services” to those who are living depressed lives or people will volunteer themselves. For example, one of the dolls (people who are in the program) came to the company because her daughter died of cancer and she could not move on with her life. After making contact with the organization, the person interested in becoming a doll goes to the facilities. The facilities look like a spa: they give their dolls five star food, there are saunas, massages, an art room, and a swimming pool. The actives are free to do what they want around the doll house. Their minds are like small children when they are in the tabula rasa state.

The person will sign a five year contract in which they will become an “active” for the doll house. During these five years, their memory will be stored on a hard drive and their mind will be stripped to a tabula rasa. They will have different personalities downloaded into their brains for different missions. These personalities or people come from a bank of over a million different people and personalities that they can piece together for a certain mission. For instance, one active was needed to help solve a child kidnapping. The personality created for this was a woman who was abducted as a child so the active was dedicated to any abduction cases,  the active was a master crime solver, had ninja skills in case of a fight, and was good with kids. After they created this new person, the personality is uploaded to an active’s brain and they leave for the mission.

After the mission, the active comes back to the “doll house” and gets their memory wiped back to the tabula rasa. They remember nothing of their mission or who they are. The active then stays in the doll house until they are needed for another mission.

When the five year contract is up, the active is given back their original memory in their body. They remember none of the missions they were put on. Even with five years of their life gone, to them it feels like they had volunteered yesterday. They are also given a large sum of money to where they do not have to work ever again in their life.

What starts to go wrong in the show is that the memories from past missions are not completely wiped. Random actions or word phrases cause a painful memory to come to the active. When the active is in the tabula rasa state, all they do is get confused; however, when another personality is imprinted in their brains, the active gets confused on who they are. This causes future problems in the doll house and leads to disasters that the technology must overcome. Sometimes the human brain is stronger than the technology.