cyborg society Connor Daly
cyborg society
An analysis on the future of new technologies and the effect it could have on society, based on the British TV series Black Mirror. Produced and written by Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror is a dark fictional drama with sometimes satirical themes that examine modern society in regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies. The question is, how close are these scenarios to reality? Is society heading in this direction?
We sleep with them next to our beds, we use them whilst driving, we check them during movies and even church, some of us have admitted we check them during intimate moments and even take pictures with them at funerals. We depend on them to get us home safely and quickly. Smart phones, tablets, computers, social media and personal technology are the first things we see after waking and the last thing we check before falling asleep. It’s hard to imagine life without them. The evolution of the world wide web, the growth of broadband, the sensation of video on the Internet, the major rise of mobile phones in world, no industry has seen more of a dramatic change and had a bigger impact in the last 25 years than the technology industry. When you compare the nature of this technology and the roles it plays in our lives, it seems like 250 years has pasted rather than 25.
Steve jobs once said “every once in awhile revolutionary product comes along that changes everything” (the invasion of smartphones: “are they good or bad?” Metaverse 2012) Personal digital technology was once viewed as a niche, mere irrelevance to our lives a quarter century ago. Today it’s essentially at the hub of people’s lives and the operations of companies within modern day society. Back then we could still go about our daily lives without the use of a computer, today we would never think twice to go anywhere without our smartphones.
THE INTERNET OF BODIES We have always readily embraced technology, the craze to upgrade to the latest gadget has become a fashion trend, a need in our lives and we’re only aware of the benefits and are blind to the possible downfalls, and now were entering an era of more ubiquitous tech, with the likes of biosensors being inserted into our bodies. The more advanced technology becomes, the more it seems to have control over our lives, emotions and body language. The Internet and social media was once advertised as a miracle for personal and social transformation, when really it is only a marvel of convenience and has led to the decline in normal social behaviours.
The ‘internet of bodies’ has become a common term in the tech world which describes the fast approaching era that we will have software, electronics, sensors and other technology embedded into our bodies and onto our skin. Soon the Internet will stop being virtual, nor a place you can go or visit but something that will live inside us. (Negative Effects of Technology on Society | Academic About social issues/ civics | 2015, Online)
If in the future technologies merge with the body, it could become almost impossible to disconnect from networks. People themselves would then be part of the “internet of things”. Will we still act like ourselves with normal human behaviour? Will it radically change our emotions or will we succumb to a life where we become numb, expressionless cyborg beings?
Black Mirror, the highly acclaimed British futurist show, features a variety of one off sceanrio’s of speculative fiction with dark and sometimes satrical themes that examine modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies. Each episode a different cast, setting and reality. ‘Most shows exist to reassure people, and I kind of wanted to do something that would actively unsettle people’ the shows creator Charlie Brooker explains
"IT A SHOW THATS WORRIED ABOUT TODAY" Even though the show is set in the near future, its really all about now’. (Creator Charlie Brooker Explains… | Black Mirror: White Christmas| Channel 4, accessed 21/12/15).
He explained the series’ title to The Guardian, noting: “If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what precisely are the side-effects? This area – between delight and discomfort – is where Black Mirror, is set. The ‘black mirror’ of the title is the one you’ll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone” (Charlie Brooker: the dark side of our gadget addiction | Technology | The Guardian, 2015)
It’s a dark, twisted, futuristic take on society, which is why I find it so interesting, and unlike most TV shows, it does not conclude with a happy ending. I have decided to analyse three particular episodes of the programme, all of which I believe start off with similar traits of our current relationship with technology but finish with an obscure, gloomy depiction of technology that I could can see our society leading towards in the near future. They subject the false way we sometimes present ourselves online, and our growing addiction to virtual lives and how our choices are sometimes directly influenced by technology. It seems that society is quickly heading in this direction, which begs the question, how close are these fictional stories to real life events?
BE RIGHT BACK The episode ‘Be Right Back’ is based in the near future and is both a haunting vision of the future and a perception of what our relationship with technology could become. The story depicts the life of Martha after she looses her partner Ash to a road accident. Deeply emotional and in grief, Martha is recommended to try a program/service that will allow her to talk to Ash, an artificial intelligence that mimics a person by collecting all of their online activities from social media, phone calls, text messages, tweets and Facebook posts. The program gains sound recognition of Ash and they begin to speak, similar to how we experience the Siri application on the IPhone.
As Martha develops a new relationship with A.I Ash, she soon finds that this gives her comfort in dealing with her loss but at the same time, the technology facilitates her entrapment and imprisons her in a lie, a pale imitation of her old life with Ash only creating a hollow imitation of his social persona, nothing but witty comments and jokes, stripped of feeling and anything of real meaning.
“I DROPPED Y I’M SORRY..”
D YOU Y..”
One particular scene that stood out for me is when Martha drops her phone and panics, screaming ‘I’ve lost you’ speaking as if Ash is a real human and has taken the form of a smartphone. This reaction is scarily close to my reaction, if I were to drop my phone, that mini heart attack, the sudden gasp that something so important to you could be damaged or gone. Admittedly what is even
scarier and stranger is that my reaction would be stronger than that if I saw someone falling in the street. At this point it seems Ash’s avatar has become so internal with Martha that she has materialised him to a smartphone and associates his well being with the safety and control of her phone.
It seemed like the service was some form of dating/ consultation app that Martha was using to try and bury her grief for Ash and move on, a way for her to talk to his personality rather than the physicality of him being present. It reminded a lot of the mobile swiping app Tinder, a modern blend of hot or not that has become wildly popular in recent years. Launching only in 2012, Tinder has taken the mobile dating market by storm with an estimated 450 million profiles rated every day and membership is growing by 15% each week. (The tinder effect: psychology of dating in the technosexual era, the Guardian, 2014.)
Tinder bridges the gap between digital and physical dating enabling users to experience instant gratification and making tinder on this as addictive as Facebook. Nourishing our competitive instincts by testing and maximizing our dating potential.
I carried out a survey of people I knew that used Tinder regularly, from half an hour a day to once a month, whether it was at night just before bed, the morning bus on the way to uni or in Chelsea trying to match with sugar daddies. Everyone varied, as it was down to the amount of time people spent talking to their matches. When I asked when these tinder, the majority of answers were down to boredom and entertainment. ‘It’s quite exciting to see who’s around you’ ‘it gives you an opportunity to meet people without even leaving the house’ answers typically varied between those two, either that or laughing at funny profiles.
A VARIATION OF EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS WERE EXPRESSED with the experience of using tinder, which included feelings of excitement, happiness, the feel of adrenaline and even anxiety. Feelings, which stemmed from the questions and curiosity of who finds an attractive? Will I see someone I know? Do I swipe left or right, yes or no? All these feelings Martha expressed whilst using the service and whether they’re good or bad, they drive our addiction to keep checking our phones, using the apps, clicking and swiping at the thought of Inevitably finding our perfect match.
“you’re not enough of him.” Martha decides to take it a step forward and obtains a blank, artificial body from the service that takes on Ash’s physical appearance. She struggles to accept its existence and starts to get frustrated with its lack of emotion and absence of Ash’s habits and personality traits. After increased anger and aggression Martha realises she can no longer tolerate Ash’s clone. It seemed that the clone of Ash was more a domestic robot, obeying Martha’s every order without any retaliation rather than a loving companion Martha hoped it to be.
The era of domestic robots and cyborg technology is coming, that much is sure. They are coming to our streets as self-driving cars, to our military as automated drones, to our homes as domestic robots. What we don’t know is how smart they will eventually become.
robo revo The developments of domestic bots or high-tech house gadgets are becoming increasingly common. Technologists hope these robots will be programmed to carry out household chores, anything from cleaning your home, maintaining your garden, home security and caring for sick and elderly people around the home. Described as the ‘IPhone of robotics’ - JIBO is the world’s first social robot for the home. The device that looks like a cross between a Dyson fan and a curvy desk lamp will have the ability to see, hear, speak and similar to the service Martha used to speak to Ash, it will learn your habits the more it’s used and even provide a companionship.
The robot revolution has been predicted for centuries. Leonardo da Vinci is said to have created a mechanical knight in 1495 that could stand, sit, and move its arms and until 50 years ago, technologists were stressing the threat of Killer robots that would be used on the battlefield. (How robots are taking over our homes — but not as you’d expect, Article 2015 – Online)
JIBO
"Our futu race betw growing p of techno wisdom w which we
- Stephen
But when I think of these robots, I can only imagine them being large, clumsy, slow moving and inferior of making any real impact. However worldrenowned theoretical physicist Stephen hawking believes that this technology can take a turn for the worst. He argues that the developments in digital personal assistants such as Siri, Google now and Androids Cortana are evidence of an IT arms race against the future of humanity (‘Rise of the machines’) all of which heavily rely on AI development, and now there are more than 150 start-ups in Silicon Valley working on AI Today. (Stephen Hawking warns computers will overtake humans within 100 years | Operating Systems | Techworld. 2015)
uture is a etween the ng power hnology & the m with we us e it”
- Stephen Hawkings
He also predicts there could be the possibility of mass unemployment due technological automated processes that will preform the same job faster, more efficient and for a cheaper rate than we can. He believes that scientists and technologists need to carefully coordinate developments in AI to ensure it doesn’t grow out of humanity’s control. (Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots. 2015. [ONLINE] Other than this episode, films
like I-robot, which is based in 2035, and Ex Machina depict a scenario where robots developed through AI learn to adapt to humans and develop a mind of there own. My conclusion of this episode is that technology/Smartphones have proven to bridge many gaps, but it will never bridge the gap for personal intimacy or friendship. On one hand the episode is about technology and on the other it’s about grief and what were all prepared to do when were in those situations, and in a funny way what technology could offer us. It underlies both societies’ relationship with and vision for technology and also our fears about its worst excesses.
Whereas Be Right Back was more a futuristic, sci-fi take on the advances of technology, the episode ‘White Bear’ is more true to modern day societies influence by technology, but is pushed to the extreme and set in the style of an apocalyptic thriller. The episode starts off with Victoria waking up to find she has lost her memory and has no recollection of where she is. A mysterious broadcast signal has turned most of the population into numb, speechless and expressionless beings unable to do anything but film Victoria’s every movement on their mobile phones even when she’s panicking and asking for help.
It is a literal nightmare and to make matters worse, she is frequently chased by masked gunmen on the street, up until she comes across a young woman, a feisty rebel who is like Victoria but has a stronger handle on the situation. She explains that the population has been enslaved by subliminal messages on TV’s and mobile phones. While most have become zombie-like voyeurs, one in ten have devolved into hunters.
victoria is carried helplessy along by the events pushed to the extreme, experiencing sheer horror but at the very last minute when all hope is lost, the plot takes an abrupt twist. It emerges that Victoria is actually part of a justice program and is being observed by a studio audience on a television set, a Derren Brown style – Hypnotic experiment. Turns out she has been put through this experience as a punishment for crime of murder.
I felt that the members of the public were White Bears most important characters, their expressionless faces with only one desire but to constantly film Victoria’s movements, accompanied by their chilling presence was what made this episode stand out for me. It provoked the idea of our compulsion to document our lives though our phones, replacing our desire to participate in it. Special occasions such as birthdays, weddings, the sight of a thousand waving LED phone screens at a gig,
we have a compelling need to film the experience The IPhone/ Android app Snapchat is an example of this, proven very popular, the app is used to share pictures and video’s that will self-destruct after a few seconds, which creates the desire to share more and more which in result absorbs our time to our smart phones.
“You can’t really be having a good time if you’re telling everyone about it. To what extent are you living your life and to what extent are you performing your life to other people? Pictures on Facebook streams of people looking happy at parties, out in nightclubs… But surely if you’re having that good of a time, you’re not posing for photos? I increasingly get the sense that that’s why people go to places, to photograph something. I don’t understand whom people are trying to impress because everyone they’re trying to impress are trying to impress other people as well. So it becomes a strange world of exaggerated service” - Charlie Brooker
The fact Victoria was a murderer allows them to accept her suffering, but it’s the mobile phones that allow them to enjoy it - after all, she’s just a character on their screens. During the London riots over student fees, there were scenes on the news where you’d have one person smashing in the window of a bank while 50 people filmed it on their phones. Many instances of people who film a violent break out on the bus rather than stepping in, as if they are sitting in front of a TV and can’t intervene.
The similarity between Be Right Back and White Bear most directly is that it’s a blatant commentary on society rather than technology or technologies influential effect on society. It explores how human empathy breaks down when individuals are reduced to an image on a screen.
the entire history of you Following the topic of capturing your life via technology, this leads onto my next episode ‘The Entire History of You’ which is set further into the future than the last two episodes yet seemed the closest to normality. A thing called ‘The Grain’ exists and is a piece of wireless technology that is implanted into people’s skulls. It allows you to record and catalogue everything and anything a person sees or does, almost like a mix between Sky+ and Facebook, which you can then playback at any point you wish, mouth movement tracking to pick up conversations, viewing your memories exactly how they happened, every single gesture, expression and change in posture. The story follows Liam’s increased aggression and paranoia after he
witnesses his wife Ffion flirting with an old friend Marcus at dinner. Intrigued and paranoid about his wife’s past with their friend whom he suspects had a little more than just a friendship, spends the night playing back the dinner, necking whiskey, zooming in and analysing every little smile, gesture and eye contact between the two. After countless questioning and arguments with his wife, it is soon revealed that Liam’s wife and friend had slept together close to nine months before their first child was born, which begged the question, was it Liam’s child?
THE CHILLING REALITY ABOUT THIS EPISODE IS THAT THESE are all human conditions, human arguments and very human responses. It seemed the Grain only made matters worse in this situation, compounding fears and jealousies that Liam had the potential to feel. Given our current appetite for sharing chunks of our personal lives on the social media, the idea of people in the future recording and sharing memories isn’t too much of a distant thought. A quote said by Marcus during dinner
‘we all scroll through the grain, rifting though out greatest hit’s’ backs up our desire to spend hours scrolling through our social media profiles to reminisce in past photos and memories in order to feel content. A recent Facebook feature
called ‘On this Day’ lets you take a trip down memory lane. Facebook pulls up and suggests old posts, photos and statuses from the same calendar date from past years, in order for you to share them with your family and friends, a feature that The Entire History of You is pretty much based on. But this is just a mild analogy of this episode. The birth of this technology like the Grain is not as far away as we might think. For instance Google glass, an optical head mounted display worn like glasses, was one of the most hyped pieces of technology to date, grasping mainstream attention. Despite its high price, privacy issues and poor public image, which ultimately doomed the device, it marked an exciting new era for the future of technology, one where anyone could walk around and feel like a cyborg human from the future.
IN SAYING THAT RESEARCHErS HAVE ALREADY STARTED DEVELOPING flexible electronics that can be placed on the skin. ‘Tech Tats’ are biosensors that rest on top of your skin and function as the body moves and stretches the skin, opposed to being injected like real tats. The hope is to diagnose or provide care to patients by detecting muscle, heart and brain activity. Motorola’s digital tattoo being another piece of skin tech, when there are numerous ways to unlock a smartphone, pin-codes, thumbprint and even face detection, the digital tattoo uses a sticker applied to your skin, the size of a penny which uses circuitry design that allows you to unlock your phone when you tap the phone to the sticker. An interesting concept but people may think you have some sort of skin disease.
As much as that sounds super cool, one of Glasses biggest obstacles was a privacy issue such as surreptitious recording of private conversations as well as health and safety concerns.
Would you really want Wi-Fi signals inches away from your brain for hours on end? As a result many establishments started to ban Glass. If the Grain really did exist, then it would face the same flaws. It would limit you to many public activities, visiting museums, art galleries, banks and casino’s not to mention someone always there to capture you doing something embarrassing in public, only for them to then post it on YouTube. It’s interesting how Glasses have been picked up on whereas an increasing number of people are now wearing/using GoPro’s out, but hasn’t stirred up as much backlash despite it being smaller, easily hidden and arguably more of a privacy threat. Perhaps if it’s not clearly visible it’s not as much as a threat, for instance CCTV cameras and in this case the Grain.
it begs the question, could we be happier without technology? One scene that captivated me the most in this episode was a scene during dinner. Hallam, a family friend explained how she had lost her grain in an accident and never got it replaced. Marcus commented ‘Going Grainless, it’s a big thing now right?’ ‘It’s a brave choice’ they continue to murmur and discuss the topic until Colleen interrupts, saying ‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t do it’. She goes on to explain that ‘Half the organic memories you have are chunk, not trustworthy’ and continues to convince her why the Grain is better for you. Hallam simply replies by saying ‘I’m just happier now’. It begs the question, could we be happier without technology? Similar to how we take pills and medication that can sometimes cause side effects such as mixed emotions and depression,
technology embedded in the body such as the Grain, that are always inside you may cause serious repercussions such as brain cancer and possibly insanity. If I told someone I didn’t have a phone or didn’t use the Internet, it wouldn’t be that big of deal, no one would stop and gasp or feel the need to comment, maybe not to the extent that Colleen did. It’s an interesting depiction of the future on how we could become so absorbed and thoroughly depend on technology that we would never stop to think otherwise.
are we turning into robots? The way we spend out time, connect and communicate with other people has changed significantly in a short period of time. It wasn’t too long ago that people were struggling to process concepts like the ‘cloud’, which felt like science fiction, and now we have self driving cars, biometric tattoos and smart watches, so I think it’s almost safe to say that these scenarios aren’t too far around the corner. It’s really just the beginning of a new digital era. Computers won’t just live on our desks or in our pockets any more. We’ll have them on our wrists, our heads and in our skin.
Let’s not forget that technology has vastly improved our way of life, we all love technology, including myself. This is not an analysis on the negative attributes of technology; it’s simply a perception of how our interaction and relationship with technology could end up in the future. Perhaps it’s not the characteristics of this emerging technology but the nature of how we misuse it as a society. It hasn’t made our society worse; it’s just exposed all the negative things in our society and we’ve not thought through the consequences of it.
John carpenter They live 1988
Black Mirror incorporates a major plot twist that you wouldn’t see coming, pushing the scenario to the extreme in order to change our perspective on technology and in my opinion help us come to a realisation. Many could have had different outcomes so I guess it’s a question of ‘what if?’ All three episodes had similar traits in that they all embodied robotic themes and characteristics in there storyline. The emotionless, cold behavior of the public in White Bear, the Grains cyborg affect on peoples personalities in The Entire History of You and Martha’s unsettling clone of Ash in Be Right back. In some way or another, we are turning into the technology we use; maybe we are turning into robots? Hans Moravec, founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, predicts that robots will emerge as their own species by2040. “They could replace us in every essential task and, in principle, operate our society increasingly well without us,” (20 Things You Didn’t Know About... Robots | DiscoverMagazine.com. ONLINE) The good news is much of the world still operates on a non-virtual basis; the bad news is we are
prepping the younger generation to function better with technology than without. We may view this as a good thing, with the world getting smaller and tech tools becoming more common in the workplace and use within modern day society, but technology is taking a hold and influencing their decisions. For instance our youths are not retaining general knowledge in their heads (you can thank Google for that), were use maps on our phone to get around instead of expanding. Rather than expanding our knowledge, Technology the likes of computers and smartphones represent “deskilling devices; that are making us lazy and our brains ineffective. What will drive and motivate us if we can enhance ourselves and if choices are made for us? It puts into perspective what could happen to us when we embrace robots into our home. This change is happening as we speak but as we are so submerged in this relationship that we are blind to see it. Technology may well be a force for good or a source of fear, it only depends how we treat and use it as a society.
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cyborg society
An analysis on the future of new technologies and the effect it could have on society, based on the British TV series Black Mirror. Produced and written by Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror is a dark fictional drama with sometimes satirical themes that examine modern society in regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies. The question is, how close are these scenarios to reality? Is society heading in this direction?