“What if technology was… (wait for it)… just technology, you ape with a gun”
Technology is neither good nor bad, it’s how you use it. The intent of Black Mirror is to make you think about how you use technology… but of course if you blame technology for your own actions, it doesn’t work.
The intent of Black Mirror is to make you think about how you use technology
This is the intent of the vast majority of most science fiction. It doesn’t make Black Mirror’s execution good or insightful. Much of Black Mirror focuses on people “surrendering control” to technology in ways that prove self-destructive or just generally destructive. At their best, many of the stories aren’t really about technology. Technology serves as an aesthetic component, but you could still make the stories work without them. The Orville actually has a better version of Black Mirror’s Season 3, Episode 1 episode “Nosedive.” It actually engages with the underlying themes and ideological basis of a world that operates like that and suggests that the technology isn’t really the problem: it’s how people elect to perceive and judge one another and the ease with which we condemn one another from a distance. It’s not a technological problem, fundamentally, but a cultural one. Technology can facilitate bad behavior or exacerbate negative societal tendencies, but it doesn’t sit at the functional center of them. Because, functionally, it’s just a Salem Witch Trial story with additional technological flavoring on top. This is something that Black Mirror never seems to “get.”
Which is why, and I will stand by this, the best Black Mirror episode is the gay one.
“What if technology was… (wait for it)… just technology, you ape with a gun”
Technology is neither good nor bad, it’s how you use it. The intent of Black Mirror is to make you think about how you use technology… but of course if you blame technology for your own actions, it doesn’t work.
This is the intent of the vast majority of most science fiction. It doesn’t make Black Mirror’s execution good or insightful. Much of Black Mirror focuses on people “surrendering control” to technology in ways that prove self-destructive or just generally destructive. At their best, many of the stories aren’t really about technology. Technology serves as an aesthetic component, but you could still make the stories work without them. The Orville actually has a better version of Black Mirror’s Season 3, Episode 1 episode “Nosedive.” It actually engages with the underlying themes and ideological basis of a world that operates like that and suggests that the technology isn’t really the problem: it’s how people elect to perceive and judge one another and the ease with which we condemn one another from a distance. It’s not a technological problem, fundamentally, but a cultural one. Technology can facilitate bad behavior or exacerbate negative societal tendencies, but it doesn’t sit at the functional center of them. Because, functionally, it’s just a Salem Witch Trial story with additional technological flavoring on top. This is something that Black Mirror never seems to “get.”
Which is why, and I will stand by this, the best Black Mirror episode is the gay one.
Why the gay one? Are you sure your favorite isn’t the one where miley cirus gets trapped in one of those apple robot dogs from the 2000’s or whatever?