
How “Black Mirror” Gets Its Barely Sci-Fi Tech Just Right - nellsavedra
https://magenta.as/how-black-mirror-gets-its-barely-sci-fi-tech-just-right-4809e500085e#.3mxzdk2x8
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Analemma_
Are people liking the latest season of Black Mirror? I'm only three episodes
in and haven't yet gotten to San Junipero, which everyone says is the really
good one, but so far I've been a little disappointed. This might be regression
to the mean, since I felt that the first six episodes were six home runs in a
row and it must be tough to keep a streak like that going, but so far season 3
seems to have lost something.

I loved the first two seasons because they felt like intelligent, worrying
criticisms of futurism, social media and technology, whereas usually when
television tries to do that it's eye-rolling and cringe-worthy. But so far
season 3 feels like the Sorkin-esque Boomer slop that I loved the first two
seasons for not being. What do other people think?

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unfunco
To me, the third episode (Shut up and dance) is the outstanding episode, at
the end I was mentally exhausted and incredibly saddened. San Junipero is
different, without ruining things, it's the only episode where at the end, I
wasn't considering the "where" that we're heading towards as a society (though
on further thinking, it's a question of whether something good is also
something moral.) – It's just very different in overall tone.

The first episode I found really difficult to watch because it felt too much
like real-life (Uber, especially.) – there's one episode which I didn't finish
as it just didn't interest me, it was the army-type episode, I got bored
incredibly quickly. The last episode (which is set on Twitter, I suppose) is
incredible.

I think there were maybe too many episodes, the VR episode, whilst good, just
felt like filler to me, though it made me phone my mother. I'll watch the
fourth season, it's still one of the better shows on television.

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tintor
> there's one episode which I didn't finish as it just didn't interest me, it
> was the army-type episode, I got bored incredibly quickly.

"Men Against Fire" was the most disturbing episode of the season. Army with AR
implants for zero-empathy ethnic cleansing.

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unfunco
I might try it again, it got to the point where they were visiting the man
that was a sympathiser and I switched off. It felt a bit like Starship
Troopers (that isn't bad I suppose) but I just wasn't captivated at the time.

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eric_h
You most definitely missed the biggest thing about that episode. I agree it
started slow/boring, but it goes to 100 in the blink of an eye.

Edit: I thought I'd add that that episode did take me two tries (I fell asleep
during the boring part the first time, but watched it again 'cause I had faith
inspired by every other black mirror episode).

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AndrewKemendo
The consistent technology theme I see across almost all episodes is that
Augmented Reality is ubiquitous, and regarded as either neutral (Nosedive) or
bad (Playtest, Men Against Fire).

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pfranz
I think it's a storytelling crutch (I don't mean that disparagingly).
Technology is super difficult to convey on screen and the most straightforward
way is to just show it. AR makes that easy.

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LurkingPresence
I really didn't like the 'bee' episode because it brushed a frightening
ecological disaster under the table so it could have an episode about how mean
people are on twitter. Really?

Even if we could construct something like those robot bees, what effect would
that have on the surrounding eco-systems? What happens when a bird or a frog
eats some little carbon-fiber robot? I feel like they squandered a more
interesting premise in order to tell a sillier one.

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Torgo
It feels like everybody has pretty much forgotten about, or at least gotten
over the emotional impact of the deepwater horizon oil spill despite it being
one of the largest manmade ecological disasters in history. brushing it under
the rug is probably closer to real life and appropriately uncomfortable when
fed back to you as fiction.

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shade23
I do not enjoy watching Black Mirror , yet I do watch it.To make me realize
that all the technology boom/bubble right now can go bad too. One of the my
favourite parts about the series is that it focuses on one technology at a
time. Had they focussed on multiple advancements of tech,they would be as
unbelievable and superficial like other sci-fi shows.

But the real world has multiple technologies intermingled with each other. The
point I am trying to make here:

While we think Black Mirror is bad enough (I cannot watch watch more than one
episode at a time),what will happen in reality could be much worse.

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bcheung
I wouldn't consider using people on bicycles to power society good science.
It's probably one of the most inefficient methods of energy generation. That
episode seemed a bit far fetched to me.

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tempestn
I agree that it would be terrible science, but since that seems so clear - the
bicycles could barely power the screens in front of them at the speed the
people were riding, let alone the greater world - I gave them the benefit of
the doubt and assumed that they're literally make-work. The (presumably
uneducated) riders may believe they're doing something necessary, but this
could be a picture of a dystopian post-scarcity future when both work and
scarcity are imposed artificially simply to keep people in line.

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Torgo
other than being post-scarcity, I'd say recycling is literally almost this.
it's not actually all that valuable as an activity and functions more as
penance for the sin of consumerism.

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tempestn
Do you have references for that? There are many challenges involved in
recycling, and it's certainly far more valuable to reduce consumption and
increase re-use, but any review I've seen still shows recycling having a
significant net environmental benefit.

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icelancer
Only certain materials are truly valuable - they're the ones people pay to
recycle. Metal-based recycling is incredibly valuable to the population and
environment.

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akvadrako
And on top of that, it's valuable enough that you don't need to worry about
it, because eventually someone will mine the trash for the metals they need.

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intrasight
"Black Mirror" is dark sci-fi. I do most of my video watching before bed, but
that doesn't work for Black Mirror. There is so little quality in television
series that I'll take whatever quality I can get. I don't like gratuitous
violence, sex, or comic relief - and that rules out 3/4 of all programming. I
find Black Mirror to be worth the investment of my time.

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BucketSort
I love how Black Mirror is like a series of existential thought experiments.
Most of them involve people living meaningless lives and how people find a way
to make it bearable.

