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I have been watching the new show Dollhouse. The premise of the show is that people are programmed with different people's personalities and that they pull from this person's memories and personality. The idea is that when these people are not programmed with their personality they are blank slates, possessing enough base information to function, but lacking any sense of individuality or personality. It seems like this concept of being able to program someone's personality is more science fiction than reality, at least in the way it is described in the show. It doesn't seem possible to just program a personality because it functions as such a complex interaction between different boxes in the brain, indeed it is a fluid construction of the brain that doesn't seem easily removable or transferrable.

I was reminded of one scene from the show after our discussion in class on Thursday. The story about the hypnotized man walking around the table because of a subconscious instruction that the table was there. In the show there is a "sleeper doll" who is both programmed with a personality and programmed defensively to a verbal cue. I think it is possible to program this type of information into a person so that they respond to a stimulus, but don't know or consider why they are responding to it.