Mirrors In Black Mirror, By Charli Charlie Brooker

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.

Jenkins talks about how the consumption of media products is a collective process, in other words, the collective intelligence is seen as an alternative source of media power. He describes how within popular culture, the collective meaning making is shaping and changing the ways religion, education, laws, politics, advertising and how the military operate (4). Jenkins discusses a process called “convergence of modes”, he explains that media and communication are becoming interconnected like the telephone and television.

In Binghamton, New York, author David Sedaris, reflected on a snow day that truly represented how his family operated behind closed doors. "Let it Snow", was a captivating personal reflection showing how exactly alcohol can ruin a family. Although this was not directly written within the essay; Sedaris however, had the abuse of alcohol as an underlying theme that the reader could pick up on. For instance, "We knocked on the pane, and without looking in our direction, she refilled her goblet and left the room." (Sedaris 73). Through the use of multiple literary devices, Sedaris was able to capture his audience through a compelling first-person narrative, the use of black humor, and the use of imagery.

Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended legal Jim Crow, the perpetuation of prejudice, institutional racism, and discrimination towards African Americans continued. The tolling effects of this social paradox on the African American community are manifested within the works of Ann Petry, an African American writer whose short stories reflect her own perspective on the results of discrimination. The short stories, The New Mirror and In Darkness and Confusion conjunctively display the negative psychological consequences linked to racism, such as loss of personal identity, social reflectiveness, insecurity, anxiety/paranoia, weakened family bonds, and violent outbreaks.

Marshall McLuhen published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man in 1964. This writing served as the basis of Carr's ideas. Technology, as it is today, is changing our brains. The Shallows explores the debate over the powers and perils of modern technology.

Electronic media can make a negative impact each of our lives, separating us from reality and

Book Review The book The Devil behind the Mirror is written by Steven Gregory it is about how globalization affects the people living in the Dominican Republic towns named Boca Chica and Andrés, Gregory study how transnational flows of capital, culture, and people are mediated by contextually specific power relations, politics, and history. He studies the informal economy, the making of a telenovela, sex tourism, and racism and discrimination against Haitians in the Dominican Republic. The topics that will be discussed are the politics of Transnational Capital. Gregory’s topic on the politics of Transnational Capital is about how Dominican Republic’s capital goes through a series changes and he shows how tourism changes the dynamics capitalism in

Neil Postman’s novel Amusing Ourselves to Death seeks to look at media and how it shapes and defines culture. Postman has been cited as one of the major media theorists and a great philosopher of his time. To understand the book fully it is important to remember where it came from. The idea was born out of a speech Postman gave about the book 1984 and A Brave New World. It takes the ideas behind these novels and looks at them in a contemporary light, where the “Big Brother” is our own television sets. Television is obviously a form of media and it delivers a message. However, that message and media has its own agenda, to above all entertain. Postman believes that television has become the primary media-metaphor and by that definition

In today’s society, media is present in our lives 24/7 allowing it to have a major influence on our culture in both positive and negative ways.

As we take a look through ancient Indian history we notice the want for power and legitimacy opposes the need for memory and identity. This kind of betrayal conclusively leads to the decline of many civilizations. The Buried Mirror, by Carl Fuentes, primarily reflects on Spain and the New world, but specifically for our class we focus on the excerpt that explains the rise and fall of the ancient Indian world starting with the creator of mankind, Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl is depicted as the paramount figure in the excerpt from The Buried Mirror. Everything in the ancient Indian word starts with him.

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.

The song “Mirrors” utilizes strategies that portray to true love, romance, and the reflection of oneself to express his deepest feeling toward his partner even though he is no longer around her physically. Throughout every chorus, the speaker repeats, over and over, how his partner is the other half of him to make him a full person. For example, in the first line of the chorus the lovable speaker states that, “I’m looking right at the other half of me.” Unlike most situations, this situation calls for both himself and his partner to look into the mirror. By doing so the speaker will see his partner’s reflection and his partner will see the speaker’s reflection.

In Douglas Crimp’s article the Photographic Activity of Postmodernism there are several terms that have been brought up over and over again. Presence is one of them, “presence that is only through the absence that we know to be the condition of representation.” It reminds me of one of my favorite photographers --- Francesca Woodman. She once said that “I allow you to see what you couldn’t see --- the inner force of one’s body.” She recreates a space that is simulating the relationship between the infant (the subject) and the mother’s body. The child was safe and content before the alienation, but a sense of lost and insecurity occurs after leaving the mother’s inner.

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