Watching Black Mirror:
*This post will contain spoilers*
In class, we were case studying the theme Cyborgs, as this is linked to convergence.
We watched the first episode of the second series title ‘Be Right Back’. I have already seen this episode of Black Mirror, so this helped for the second time watching it, to make notes.
The themes of Black Mirror:
Ash uses his social networking constantly, posting and tweeting onto social media. This is representing our society today, as most individuals are glued to their devices constantly social updating and instead messaging.
However, when Ash dies, his distraught lover Martha, is then invited by a friend to join a program to help provide an answer to the grieving. The program creates an AI for Martha to speak to on the phone. They imply it does this by using all the social media posts Ash has made in the past, this also includes voice recording and images. I do find this quite freakishly creepy and satisfying. As this gives the audience a sense of immortally, most individuals tend to make their social media accounts best represent themselves. This allows them to consider their online profiles to be used as a memory book (or a life journal) for that individual to stay online inevitably.
Halfway through the episode, Martha considers joining the next step of the program. The next step involves her receiving an empty clone of a body of her lover, that she activates in her bathtub. This is where the creepiness kicks in for me. The empty body transforms into her former lover, still using the same voice and language Ash used for his social networking sites.
This is just one concept of how our social media account may be used after passing away. I find this idea to be quite scary, having a sort of clone of a deceased person moving around to help the grieving on a former lover. Social networks should be used as a memorial for the dead.
This is enough said to get the gist of the episode. However, a few days ago I encountered a Facebook post, what is an article similar to the themes of this Black Mirror Episode.
For more on the article “It May Soon Become Possible to Download Dead People’s Personalities into Robots” and the Facebook Legacy feature click here.
You can find the episode here:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-mirror/on-demand/54663-001
