Black Mirror Analysis

In the 21st century nothing has been more influential on the human race than technology has. Technology is a part of anything and everything and the thought of no technology would be considered the apocalypse. Two women, Jane McGonigal, a video game designer, and Sherry Turkle, a technology professor at MIT, both have their own perspectives on technology and how it impacts emotions. McGonigal’s main focus is how video games can be used as a model on how we as humans can make this world a better place. Turkle’s studies are focused on how technology such as cell phones, online avatars, and social media make a whole generations personal development different from past generations. McGonigal is extremely optimistic towards the idea of not only video games but technology as a whole being a huge impact on the improvement of earth’s population. Turkle is more skeptical on technology bringing up thought evoking questions regarding whether technology and its effects on us should be considered good or bad. Even with their contrasting topics both of these women are trying to show how the technology of everyday life alter the emotions. Turkle and McGonigal’s ideas are comparative regarding the emotional effect on people using alternate realities being positive and they also agree that technological communication has become a tool for emotional benefit in society, but their technological views differ on how technology will help us mature as a person.

Advances in technology has altered the world as we know it, and it can only progress farther. Through the minds of many intelligent and devoted individuals across time technology has developed into a twenty first century deity. A young child one hundred years ago could never envision a world like ours today, ruled by ones and zeros. The media has affected us in ways that we can’t even comprehend and will continue to steadily provide humans with a faster and faster flow of information for years to come. But what is the cost to have all of the information you can imagine at your fingertips? The exponential increase in information that we process in all forms of media is affecting the way that we live by making society more alienated.

The passages “Plugged-In and Tuned-Out: The Dangers of Teenage Virtual Addiction” by Dr. Nicholas Kardaras and “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury both approach the same topic through different perspectives. Kardaras, an addiction specialist, consistently provides examples of ways technology can impact a child’s life for the worse. However, Bradbury takes his readers to the future, showing the world as if technology took over human lives. The central idea conveyed through both pieces of writing is the potential dangers posed by technology to both individuals and societies.

Technology may not be everything it seems. Although worldwide use of various devices and applications has revolutionized the way we live and our culture in a powerful and helpful way, there are many ramifications to be considered. The consequence to this revolution of culture and way of life is carefully observed and portrayed by M.T. Anderson in his novel Feed. Anderson uses the literary art of satire to create characters that are exaggerated versions of people today to reveal their uncontrollable obsession with technology.

Also, the contact lenses that each person has reminds me a bit of Google Glass, but still pretty far from it. In the Veldt, the nursery is an automated room that projects a lifelike version of any location you pick which reminds me a lot to virtual reality. What surprises me are effects of virtual reality on children. I remember once being extremely upset as a child when I missed an episode of my favorite TV show because my parents wanted me to help with chores. I always think, why would kids ever pay attention to their parents when they can be using technology? What’s going to happen when technology becomes more advanced and people start creating new technological inventions? You would think with so many people saying that virtual reality isn’t good, Google Glass wouldn’t be becoming more popular.

“New technology is not good or evil in and of itself. It’s all about how people choose to use it.” - David Wong. This is especially true in “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, as it shows how at some point, there will be no gap between the virtual world and the real world. In the short story, parents allow their kids to dream up anything and make the nursery show it to them, that the nursery begins to replace George and Lydia as parents.

In the article Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, he brings into question if our society has in fact, delved into the story line of a George Orwellian or Brave New World scenario. In George Orwell’s 1984, the culture had gotten rid of useful and sufficiently communicative language, as well as written text contradicting anything to do with the government. The characters, along with being forbidden individual or radical thoughts, were deprived of their individualism and history. The Brave New World scenario, as mentioned by Postman, portrays another story. Instead of having external oppression, as in 1984, the characters willingly gave themselves over to the love of technology that, “undo their capacity to think.” Postman believes that the American culture is moving towards a Huxleyan future and gives an example in a study taken in 1983 by the Nielsen Report on Television. He summarizes that the average American child watches 5,000 hours of television before they even start school, and 16,000 hours by the time they graduate high school. This startling data contributed to a growing alarm that both television and other aspects of daily life (church, school, news, politics) are leaning more towards the pull of entertaining its audience than delivering

Connor Manning addresses some of the more common stereotypes bisexuals experience such as people not accepting your sexuality unless you have had sexual experiences with multiple genders, that bisexuals are more likely to cheat on a partner, bisexuals are greedy, that sexuality is black and white between homosexuality and heterosexuality (Manning). Within media representation of bisexuals is scarce. When there are bisexuals in media, writers often either rely heavily on stereotypes instead of developing an interesting and complex character, like Alice in The L Word (Schrag and Dabis), or they use bisexuality as a plot point and gloss over it for the rest of the show, like Reagan in New Girl (Meriwether). If bisexuals were portrayed more

Both the article, “Why I just asked my students to put their laptops away” by Clay Shirky, and the article, “The collective conscience of reality television” by Serena Elavia have their differences, but mostly similarities. The article by Clay Shirky talks about how electronics affect students while in school. Many teachers had been letting students use their phones and other electronics during a class but later teachers began to tell their students to put their devices away. The other article from Serena Elavia talks about television and how the producers don’t always show the truth behind the television screen and they are only making the viewers upset. The net Media was described on both of the articles, and how it’s also been affecting us today. Although there are many other differences between the two articles, some similarities include social media, distractions caused, and people’s desire over the topics, both articles agree with the topic.

Written by English satirist Charlie Brooker, “Black Mirror” is a contemporary British reworking of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone.” Featuring tales of techno-paranoia inspired by our thoroughly technological age, “Black Mirror” taps into a “collective unease with the modern world.” While the Netflix television series, like many works of science fiction, centers on the dangers of technology—the “black mirrors” that are our phone and computer screens—its warnings diverge drastically from those present in canonical mid-20th century works, like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, man uses technology to oppress others. In “Black Mirror,” man uses technology to enslave himself.

People very often debate whether technology is good or bad. Many people believe that technology can only cause harm to their lives and society, while many others strongly defend the technologies which have made their lives much more leisurely and enriching than it could have been several hundred years ago. In my opinion, both of these views are correct to an extent, but I also believe that what should be examined is not whether technology in its self is good or bad, but rather how we as humans use it.For decades now, television has been accused of contributing to the dissolution of the American family and the destruction of the minds of those who watch it. However, although the TV has been involved in this, the problem roots not with

Technology surrounds us. Like water in the ocean, people are swimming in technology each and every day. From the radio playing a favorite song to a text received about the results of a game, people use technology constantly. However, there is a point at which people are overtaken by technology; when the wave engulfs us and there is no way out. People are becoming more and more dependent on technology. Ever since technology began heavily integrating itself into society, many major uses have developed, but at a cost that brings on dangerous side effects, both mental and physical, as shown by the potential Y2K bug, that will continue unless active measures are sought out by those so dependent on technology.

Today’s science fiction is often tomorrow’s reality. As the pace of change has quickened, so it appears that we are actually living within a science fiction movie. Programs on TV continue to amaze or frighten us with yet more technological break through and with clever new products and gadgets. Over the last decade and certainly through the rest of this century, the major agent for these changes has been and will continue to be electronic computer and its derivatives. The Digital Age exploded into existence not with a whimper but a bang. The globe still shakes from its entry. The journey was long, but the impact is immediate. Now, for instance, the breath of an unborn baby can be captured and rendered visible, the

The utmost, overriding facet of our society has been placed in our hands, perched on a stand, and then plugged into a socket: modern technology. Today, individuals without up to date technology are christened anomalies that are late to the ‘smart era’ of smartphones, smartwatches, and smart televisions. In Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr, and Be a Gamer, Save the World by Jane McGonigal, it is made comprehensible that, as a society, we have begun to intertwine ourselves in the tangles of our electronics, which we cannot seem to relinquish. Our generation has been advancing with technology nonstop to the point where a new gadget is practically released daily. Recently, the latest technological fixation that has rapidly spread like wildfire is video streaming: whether it be video-on-demand or live, it has concurrently seized and fashioned jobs, as well as intermixed communities and individuals alike.

The life expectation of the world has been design to enmity the images and major media portrayals. Reality now is becoming a reflection of what the digital media enforces upon its viewers. Debord goes on to say “The spectacle is not