If you haven't seen Black Mirror, then as a Steemian you need to take a look.
Technology may indeed be the solution to the seemingly insurmountable problems we're facing, especially with the emergence of open source, blockchain based technologies. There is much hope in the world as we move into a time where people will be able to download open source plans for things like farming machinary, or even human sized quad-copter drones, and print them on their 3D printer with hemp based plastics... just to name a few of the many exciting innovations on the way.
But there is a shadow side, and Black Mirror on Netflix is a dark distopian warning to the first of the digital generations.
Every Steemit developer and every Steemian needs to see it. Not because the twisted tales of technology getting the best of us are bound to happen, but because show creator Charlie Brooker and his team have gone to considerable trouble to imagine the worst case scenarios for us, so that we might heed their warnings and avert the real possibility of creating them.
What is Black Mirror?
Pick up your smart phone and look at it when the screen is dark and not active. Or take a look at your tablet or computer screen when it's not displaying any signal. This glass fronted device, despite the blackness of inactivity will show your own reflection, albiet a dark one. This is the Black Mirror that Charlie Brooker is holding up to our culture.
So far there are two 3 episode seasons, an extended 2 hour 'Christmas Special' episode, and a new 6 episode season funded by Netflix. All episodes are currently available on Netflix. Each episode is an autonomous story with none of the characters continueing into any other episode. They are each set in the same world but in a different time period ranging from the immediate future to the distant future. In the world of Black Mirror, things seems to become more technocratically dystopian the further into the future we go. Episodes are also not told chronologically, so you can dip into them in any order. My personal suggestion is to skip the first episode for a while, as it has been known to cause quite a few people to switch off and not come back. Which brings me to my next point.
Brace Yourself
In my opinion, Black Mirror is some of the most powerful screen entertainment ever made. I work in film and TV and also lecture at a film school so I don't say this lightly. Due to somewhat irresponsible parenting I have been watching R rated content like The Evil Dead since i was 6 years old and can't remember ever having nightmares due to a screen story... until the White Bear episode of Black Mirror. And that may not even be the most intense of them.
It is intended to shake people out of their slumber and deliver an alarm so loud and so clear that you can't help but look at social media and emergent technologies differently forever more. The good news is that they aren't all like that. If you want to ease in gently then maybe start with the following list.
The Nicer Episodes (the ones my media sensitive wife can watch)
Season 3, Episode 4:San Junipero
Perhaps best known as 'the happy episode', it's almost as though the show creators were told by Netflix, 'we'll fund six eps on one condition, that you make at least one happy episode. I imagine the cynical charlie brooker going away and imagining the worst hell possible... being trapped in the 80's forever... and then fulfilling the brief by making a really lovely romantic episode about that.
Without giving too much away this one explores the future possibility of reality simulation. Are there many stepping stones from where we are to that? Not as much as you might think. While Facebook is investing in Oculus Rift in order to take social media into VR, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX has just started a company called Neuralink which is focusing on developing a computer-brain interface. This tech is already in it's infancy helping 'locked-in' quadraplegics, who can only more their eyes, interact with the outside world. It's logical to think that if Reality Simulation or RS is the next step beyond VR and if social media is heading into VR then it will no doubt go into RS. Forward thinking developers and Steemians hoping to steering this community in a positive direction may find this useful someday, especially as Steemit emerges as more than a social media platform but a social media economy.
Season 3, Episode 1: Nosedive
By far the most relevant warning to Steemians is Nosedive, and thankfully it's one of the more accessible ones. Nosedive explores a future world where every interaction is ranked like an ebay rating, uber rating or... Steemit rating. In this world you can't get the apartment you wish to live in if you aren't ranked high enough. The person you buy your coffee can essentially upvote you or downvote you, and so can eveyone else. One minor character in the show mentions that they were unable to get access to IVF in order to have children because it not available to someone at her rating level.
If you only watch one episode of Black Mirror, watch this.
Season 2, Episode 1: Be Right Back.
This episode presents a future scenario where after a person dies, their loved ones can continue interacting with them as a bot which mimics their behaviour thanks to an app which compiles their entire lifetime of social media and video output and interaction. It explores the difference between the persona we show people online and who we really are. Food for thought as social media outlets like Facebook strive to be more than a slave for us to interact, but a place to record our entire lives.
Season 2, Episode 3: The Waldo Moment
The Waldo Experiment asks what happens when a crass cartoon talk show host voiced by a fairly regular pub going guy lets loose with a political rant that goes viral, and the public want cartoon Waldo to run for office. What starts as a humourous publisict stunt soon spirals out of control when dark 'powers that be' see an opportunity to transition from the problematic human puppets they usually install into power to a digital puppet with no real identity at all. This episode serves to show how a regular Joe, in the wrong circumstances, can easily become the unwitting tipping point into totalitarian control.
The Moderately Intense Episodes
S1, E2: Fifteen Million Credits
Perhaps the best episode so far, this ep is set perhaps further into the future than any other. It takes place in a world where the characters literally peddle for credits, and they are literally surrounded by screen entertainment surrouding them on all sides. One of the few ways out to a better life is through an X Factor like variety show.
This episode explores that vacuous nature of reality talent shows in the darkest extreme, as well as the endless hamster wheel we could find ourselves feeling trapped in. In this world, we see digital micropayments just as we find them in Steemit, and we also see a population of people 'peddling' in order to accumulate digital currency with the hope of a better life. Sound familiar?
S1, E3: The Entire History of You
Imagine a world where tech enhanced contact lenses allow you to record every experience and play them back anytime you wish. Sounds great! At least until Black Mirror takes you on a dark and twisted ride through the paranoia and jealousy at the end of a collapsing relationship. Think 'You said this' / 'No I didn't' / 'Well lets play it back' and times that by about a hundred.
S2,E4: White Christmas
Nauralink Reality Similation with a twist. This episode touches on themes found in the film Inception in that there is information inside someone's mind and someone else is coming to find it.
S3, E6: Hated In The Nation
This ep is a murder mystery involving insect sized drone technology falling into the wrong hands. It asks questions about the security of technology that might be used as weapons by people with the skills to hack them.
The Most Intense Episodes
S1, E1: The National Anthem
This episode isn't for the faint hearted. It was a bold move to lead with this, but it sure makes an impact. It somehow pre-emptively explores a story to do with a prime minister and a pig, well before David Cameron was mocked by Cassetteboy for gettin' piggy with it. The deeper layers however reveal the dark side of mass media consumption and t errorism in the age of twitter.
S3, E3: Playtest
A shady gaming company uses neural link technology to full reality simulation horror games with an AI searches your memories to learn what you are afraid of. Black Mirror takes on the horror genre and leaves the audience predictibly disturbed on multiple levels. Powerfully done, but certainly nothing you'd want to write home to your mother about.
This ep is a deeper look at the potentials of neuralink technology not only for helping our minds control computers, but perhaps also the other way around. Steemians may wish to ponder what happens when social media is hooked directly to our brains? Will hackers be able to search our memories for secrets we'd prefer to keep hidden... like the password to our coin wallet, or worse.
S3, E5: Men Against Fire
Men Against Fire picks up where 'The Entire History of You' left off in Season 1, with the digitally enhanced contact lens technology now being used in military applications. They seem to need all the help they can get with the very literal monsters now inhabiting the earth, needing to be exterminated. All is not what it seems when one of the soldiers starts to experience glitches in his contact lens unit revealing that the enemy may not be what they seem.
This episode explores the fact that what we are shown through digital technology may not always be the truth and how if we're not careful we can unwittingly end up serving someone elses agenda without realising.
S2, E2: White Bear
This one gave me nightmares. It explores what happens when the phone-camera toting population gets melded with something like reality TV in an episode about the nature of justice that opens far more questions than it answers.
S3, E3: Shut Up and Dance
In many ways this episode follows on from White Bear in that explores the future of punishment, however in this instance it goes deep into the dark possibilities of vigilante hacker justice. Think Anonymous, but with more bite. Could Charlie Brooker be trying to seed some ideas to the present day vigalante hackers? Watch the ep and you tell me.
It's my hope that this article will prompt discussion on what some of the problems are for Steemit that we can pre-empt and potentially prevent. Are you ready to peer into the Black Mirror and examine Steemit?
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