In the future of Trevin Matcek’s short film Life Begins at Rewirement, a man struggles with a familiar decision: to commit his mother to a nursing home. But in this nursing home, the residents experience the rest of their lives digitally.
Update: The Vimeo video is now embeddable!
This short takes the now-familiar trope of uploaded consciousness and makes it not about immortality or expanding our consciousness in a different form, but about the removal of the elderly from society. There are certainly some uncomfortable questions raised about the autonomy of the elderly in determining their own fates, but the technology may offer both uncertainty and comfort to the people left behind.
Plus, it’s got a great cast, with Jill Andre as Jessica Ender, Barry Del Sherman as her son Simon, and the always fabulous Dave Allen selling us on the merits of uploaded retirement.
