Recap

The Entire History of You is about an insecure guy who literally (and impulsively) replays lived experiences using “the Grain,” an internal dash cam that records everything he sees and hears, controlled with an iPod click wheel-esque remote. While initially sympathetic—he asks a group of lawyers if they ethically and morally support litigating retrospective parenting cases when first introduced—the rest of the episode is his ruminating obsessively on not-entirely-unfounded insecurities.

“When you suspect something, it actually feels better when it’s true?” - Liam

Um, not necessarily, Neo.

Colleen from Grain Development and Hallam

Colleen was a minor character from the dinner party who got done dirty by the editing team. According to the shooting script, she provided a bit more context regarding and arguments for the Grain, mostly in respone to Hallam, the token Grainless in attendance.

Pro-Grain rationals

Colleen works in Grain development and could never imagine a life without her Grain. She’s suspicious of “organic memories” because they’re junk and easily manipulated:

“You can implant false memories just by asking leading questions in therapy. You can make people ‘remember’ getting lost in shopping malls they never visited. Getting bothered by paedophile babysitters they never had.”

Which is very similar to arguments made by the now dissolved False Memory Syndrome Foundation in defense of child abusers.

Organic memory’s a trap, a sort of self-deception engine. With a Grain you’ve got the truth. - Colleen

Beyond being a record of truth, Colleen further suggests that this tech is the ultimate insurance, from misplaced keys to insurance fraud.

A Grainless life

After not suffering brain damage or losing sight when Hallam’s Grain was forcibly gouged from her head and stolen, she realized that she liked life without it and felt happier though never explains why.

Unfortunately, the next time we see her, the police are hanging up on her call because she couldn’t show a Grain feed of the assault in progress. It’s crazy to imagine “pics or it didn’t happen” become police policy, which is all the more upsetting after considering an earlier Colleen line that going Grainless is “huge with hookers.”

Not a body network

I would argue that the Grain is not a body network (Pedersen 21). While certainly embodied, nothing indicates that the Grain has access to any network or Cloud. Memories appear to be stored locally, based on the commercial:

and Hallam’s experience. For example, whoever gouged Hallam’s Grain was able to access to all of her memories, which is also a strong case for data encryption at rest.

Another example is that intoxicated Liam is able to dismiss the warning and drive his car. Maybe that’s just a “privacy” feature, but it seems more likely that the Grain is unable to lock down the car or notify law enforcement. Even when Liam was going through the UK TSA equivalent, he’s the one controlling the time frames and playback. Data is never shared passively.

There’s no Dark Knight-esque always on transmission feeding a constant stream to data centers. Which is good. The idea of a continual mode of surveillance within a network of “datafied” bodies is far more dystopian (Minority Report, anyone?) than anything in this episode. Granted heart BPM and body temperatures are a long ways away from anticipating crimes, but still, if I don’t want to be continually recorded externally, why would I accept it internally? Who really benefits (read profits) from my information?

Discussion question

Obsessing over little the tiniest details isn’t anything new. What strategies have you found to be effective to get out of your own head?