IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 35

opinion

Doug Hill

Black Mirror

he future as depict-
ed in works science
fiction, especially of
the multiplex variety,
is almost uniformly
dystopian. The bleakness of these
visions annoys technology enthusi-
asts, who worry that cumulatively
they give machines a bad name. As
the headline on an essay in Wired
magazine put it, "Stop Writing Dy -
stopian Sci-Fi - It's Making Us All
Fear Technology."
For sheer pungency of dystopian
imagination, it would be hard to beat
Black Mirror, an anthology TV series
in the style of The Twilight Zone - a
different story with a different cast
each week - originally produced by
the BBC and subsequently contin-
ued on Netflix. The title refers to the
variety of screens that have prolifer-
ated in our daily lives, and that all-
too-often seem to dominate them.
The twelve episodes produced so far
(a new season is in the works) pres-
ent a consitently dark vision of our
technological destinies, not in some
galaxy far, far away, but right here,
and soon. As the show's creator, co-
executive producer and main writer
Charlie Brooker put it, Black Mirror
is "about the way we live now - and
the way we might be living in 10 min-
utes' time if we're clumsy."
Indeed, one of the uncanny things
about Black Mirror is how plausible
the disturbing outcomes it predicts
can seem. A cartoon figure who pro-

T

fanely ridicules the proposals of seri-
ous politicians comes to power and
installs a fascist state. The pursuit
of affirmation on social media be-
comes a desperate drive to be liked
at all costs - or else. A man sleeps
in a room that is surrounded on all
sides by ceiling-high commercials
he can't turn off. Hackers record
people's most intimate moments
and blackmail them into performing
criminal acts lest their secrets be
posted on the Internet for the world
to see.
In interviews, Charlie Brookner
doesn't come across as a raging
Luddite. To the contrary, he says
he's as much of a gadget freak as
anyone, but adds that he also wor-
ries about where it's all heading.
This, of course, pretty much sums
up the ambivalence most of us feel
toward technology. On the popular
American radio program Fresh Air
Brooker added an interesting elabo-
ration. It isn't technology per se that
scares him, he said: it's much big-
ger than that. "I'm quite a paranoid
and worried person. I could worry
about pretty much anything you put

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2017.2697082
Date of publication: 8 June 2017

June 2017

∕

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

in front of me, so I'm not actually
sort of anti-technology.... It's a fear
of everything."
This points to why shows like
Black Mirror, and dystopian sci-
ence fiction in general, are impor-
tant: They have the good sense to
recognize that things can go hor-
ribly wrong. Obviously this can go
too far; you don't want to spend
your life hiding beneath the covers.
But neither do you want to blithely
sally forth on courses of action that
might well lead to disaster. The lat-
ter course has characterized our
general approach to the introduction
of powerful new technologies, with
predictably unpredictable results.
This is precisely what bothers
me about too many technological
enthusiasts: They don't worry nearly
enough. Regularly they share with us
their almost messianic confidence
that the technologies they're working
on will deliver us from every trouble
and toil. That anyone would doubt
their potential to fulfill that promise
seems beyond their comprehension.
(continued on page 87)

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