Primer

Work Title: Primer
Medium: Film
Episode Title:
Year: 2004
Writer(s): Shane Carruth
"Original" Writer: Yes Own work?: No
Summary:

From imdb.com: At night and on weekends, four men in a suburban garage have built a cottage industry of error-checking devices. But, they know that there is something more. There is some idea, some mechanism, some accidental side effect that is standing between them and a pure leap of innovation. And so, through trial and error they are building the device that is missing most. However, two of these men find the device and immediately realize that it is too valuable to market. The limit of their trust in each other is strained when they are faced with the question, If you always want what you can't have, what do you want when you can have anything? Written by Sujit R. Varma

Era/Year of Portrayal: present_day
Distinctive characteristics of the world in portrayal:

Present day 2004.

Technology

  • Name of portrayed presence-evoking technology: The Box
  • Description of the technology: Coffin-shaped boxes, but about 3 or 4 feet deep, 10 feet long, and 3 feet wide... made of metal and pvc pipe and electric wires, then filled with argon. Because of the modular design that the boxes have, one box can be collapsed and then brought into another box for travel.
  • Nature of task or activity: Time travel, playing the stock market.
  • Performance of the Technology: It works very well.
  • Description of creator(s): 2 white males, Aaron & Abe, in their 30s - computer engineers.
  • Major goal(s) of creator(s): The goal was to make some marketable technology so they could make money. They didn't plan to make a time machine though... that part was unintentional.
  • Description of users of technology: The same 2 white males (Aaron & Abe) in their 30s who are computer engineers that created the technology.
  • Type(s) of presence experience in the portrayal: spatial_presence
  • Description of presence experience: The time travelers find the experience to be envigorating, but it can also make them sick sometimes if they don't use the technology the right way.
  • User awareness of technology during experience: yes.
  • Valence of experience: The time travelers find the experience to be envigorating, but it can also make them sick sometimes if they don't use the technology the right way.
  • Specific responses: exhaustion, feelings of self-motion (vection), motion sickness, illness, happiness - one man ends up in a coma because of his time travel. It causes Aaron and Abe to lose the ability to write legible words with a paper and pencil/pen.
Long-term consequences:

Bittersweet. Aaron and Abe's friendship ends over their disagreements about how they should or should not try to revise history or prevent paradoxes. In the end, Aaron is in a foreign country and is working with a team on plans to build a new time machine much larger than a coffin-shaped box for 1 individual. It is sad that their friendship ends, but it's also exciting that a bigger and better box is being built.

Other:

Coder name: Amanda Scheiner
Coder email: amandags@temple.edu
Coder affiliation: Temple University