Dating Rules from my Future Self

Work Title: Dating Rules from my Future Self
Medium: TV Movie
Episode Title:
Year: 2012
Writer(s): Sallie Patrick
"Original" Writer: Yes Own work?: No

Summary:

"Dating Rules From My Future Self" centers on 27-year-old Lucy (Appleby), who begins getting text messages from herself ten years in the future warning her to change her dating strategy. With the assistance of her future self, Lucy must face her current longtime boyfriend, who she knows isnt the one. (IMDB.com).


Era/Year of Portrayal: present_day

Distinctive characteristics of the world in portrayal:

Main character has iPhone; Dress is present day style


Technology

  • Name of portrayed presence-evoking technology: Smartphone (iPhone)
  • Description of the technology: The main character programs an application for her mobile smartphone with personal information about who she wants to be in the future (goals, desires, etc.) so that she can send text message to it with questions about whether her current actions are guiding her in the right direction. The only way the user interfaces with the technology is through text messages, making spatial presence limited. The quality of the experience is relatively unaffected, however, because the text message format is consistent with reality. That is, the character receives text messages from her virtual, future self the same way that she would a real person. In fact, she does not realize it is a computer application at first, but the text messages are so bossy that she demands to know who dares to talk to her that way.
  • Nature of task or activity: The main character only sends text messages (never talks) to her future self using her mobile smartphone.
  • Performance of the Technology: The technology is portrayed as functioning well for the most part. The only hitches occur when the main character loses her phone or the phone dies temporarily from a lack of battery life. At one point, another character even jokes with the main character when she is upset that her phone died that it is not a real person, so she should not worry. She can always charge it.
  • Description of creator(s): Young, white woman who works in an IT-related company
  • Major goal(s) of creator(s): The primary goal is to make money, but the woman is shown to have other inspirations for creating the technology.
  • Description of users of technology: Young, white woman who created the technology. She is the only one to use it.
  • Type(s) of presence experience in the portrayal: social_presence
  • Description of presence experience: This is an example of presence because the smartphone app is simply an algorithm for who she wishes to be in the future but she interacts with it as if she is actually communicating with her future self. Thus, the mobile app evokes social presence in that the medium becomes an actor with which she engages. Since she interfaces with the app as if it is herself in the future, she displays an intimate relationship with it. The app takes on a 'big sister' role in her life.
  • User awareness of technology during experience: The user is aware she is using a technology (she created it), but that does not seem to matter. She willingly interacts with the application as if it were a real person, her in the future, presumably because the application is so good that she believes it has answers that she does not.
  • Valence of experience: The user depends on the technology to solve her dilemmas. She finds it very useful.
  • Specific responses: --
Long-term consequences:

When the technology breaks down, the user seems lost and unable to deal with her personal life alone. There seems to be some awareness of the impossibility of making life decisions in such a scientific way, that is relying on technology to show us the steps to becoming who we want to be. As a situation comedy, the show ends happily for the main character as expected.

Other:

Coder name: Kavita Nayar
Coder email: kinayar@temple.edu
Coder affiliation: Temple University