Data recovery is an essential part of our modern day world, with machines facilitating the vast majority of our lives on the internet and off. The loss of personal information and customer records would be catastrophic for any organization, and so data recovery software is a popular kind of insurance for many. But, more broadly speaking, data recovery or memory itself has been a favorite subject of science fiction, with many plots revolving around the uncanny sensation that we are nothing more than our memories – which, in a perfectly digitized world, would be nothing but easily copied bits of data!
Fascinating as these considerations are, for an even more explosive idea all you have to do is mix them with old-fashioned notions of clairvoyance and déjà vu. First coined by New Age spiritualist P.M.H. Atwater (née Phyllis Johnston), future memory is conceived of as the phenomenon whereby one can know the future.
With plain old prophetic foresight now repackaged in 21st Century techno-speak, science fiction writers are busy exploring the nexus between man and machine, self and other, reality and virtual reality. The gist of it all is pregnant with implication: if we are nothing but our memories; if our memories are but bits of information; if technological innovation can catch these bits the same way it manipulates all other information; then what does it mean to be oneself?
Philip K. Dick touched on these very questions in his short story “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Adapted into a kind of futuristic movie noir under the title of Blade Runner, the concept centers on just what it means to be human in a world where very humanlike androids can be made.
Another movie adapted from a Dick short is Total Recall, involving a federal agent’s created memories. More recently, the Leonardo Dicaprio vehicle Deception also explored the same what-if scenarios: what if thoughts could be planted? Never mind data recovery; seems like technology will one day create the need for deliberate data loss! And indeed, there are any number of science fiction stories devoted to that topic, too…