Over the course of the last two weeks, quite a few people have told me that I should watch “Black Mirror”, a British SciFi TV program.<\/p>\n
In particular, “Black Mirror” is a dark and dystopian vision of possible near futures. As I understand it, each episode takes one or more leaps into the possible near future, when some technological advance or other has created a corresponding set of cultural and societal shifts.<\/p>\n
And in every case, the results are not good. In essence, the program is a series of cautionary tales about what might go wrong — very very wrong — if we are not careful with how we use emerging technologies.<\/p>\n
Because so many people had recommended it, I decided to sit down and watch an episode. It was extremely well made, with excellent acting, superb production, really thoughtful writing, persuasive character arcs and a powerful story. In short, everything that high quality television should be.<\/p>\n
I hated it, and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be watching any more episodes.<\/p>\n
I realize that the problem here most likely lies with me, not with the program. I spend a lot of time thinking about socially positive ways that advancing technology can help make the world a better place. Now along comes this show which essentially portrays technology as the Boogeyman.<\/p>\n
Yes, I do understand that cautionary tales serve a positive purpose. It’s important that people think about these things. Ideally we should all be thoughtful about important issues that affect our lives, and dystopian scenarios can indeed raise awareness.<\/p>\n
Yet to see the negative side so starkly portrayed, and perhaps even fetishized, just gives me nightmares. I don’t need to be scared — I need to engage in thoughtful discussion.<\/p>\n
When somebody walks in the room and loudly shouts “Boo!”, which is essentially what this show does, I’m not sure that thoughtful discussion is still possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the course of the last two weeks, quite a few people have told me that I should watch “Black Mirror”, a British SciFi TV program. In particular, “Black Mirror” is a dark and dystopian vision of possible near futures. As I understand it, each episode takes one or more leaps into the possible near … Continue reading “Dark tomorrows”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14458"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14458"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14460,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14458\/revisions\/14460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}