While I didn't always enjoy the topics discussed in the season one episodes of "Black Mirrors", they brought up very thought-provoking topics regarding media and technology use. They discussed dependency and ethics and caused me to think differently about how my life is influenced my media and technology.
The first episode, which we watched in class, was the most realistic to me about our world today. No new technology was introduced, it merely raised a question about how dependent our lives are on technology. To me, this seemed like a very real scenario in which a person of power was blackmailed into doing something inappropriate in public, in order to save the life of another person in power.
The following two episodes seemed to be set in the future and, to me, required a bit of imagination for them to be believable. The second episode was confusing to me because I didn't feel that enough context was provided. During this episode, I was more questioning the logistics than their media use. The final episode of season one seemed like it could be possible in the near future, and drew a strong connection to the book "Feed". While there may be some conveniences to being able to conjure up memories at any time and replay them, the people in this episode were living in their past memories and not trying to make new ones with the people they love.
Overall, I found these episodes to be very thought-provoking and I have since been questioning my media use. It took me a while to understand the title "Black Mirrors", but even the title sparks questions for me now, as I have since been noticing people constantly checking their reflection in the black screens of their phones and other technology.
I like that you point out how the characters focus on their past memories instead of trying to make new memories, which is something that happens today with cell phones. It seems to be generally acknowledged that it is rude or weird to be on our phones while we are with our friends or family but we all still do it anyway. Our focus is on what could be happening elsewhere or what happened on Twitter hours ago rather than focusing on what we are doing in that present moment. It is another example of how we have interwoven technology into our daily lives.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Episode 1, "The National Anthem" was definitely the most realistic in that it seemed to be set in present day and no new technologies were involved. However, as I wrote about in my post, I would argue that Episode 3, "The Entire History Of You", played with an even more real fear surrounding our human nature, specifically our trust in each other and how technology could play into that in the future in a more amplified way than it already does.
ReplyDelete