Ever since a friend recommended the Black Mirror anthology series some years back, I have been a fan. So when Season 4 came out on December 29, my New Year’s holiday day was spent binge watching the whole season – I couldn’t help myself!
Although this was not the best season, many of the episodes were very intriguing to watch. [Spoilers ahead]. After finishing all the 6 episodes, I observed a sort of common theme around the technology, i.e., technology allowing for full immersion to the point of transferring consciousness and or allowing for shared experiences – with the exception of the Metalhead episode (Ep. 5) which really did not provide much background information. We observe for instance, that the technology in episode 1: USS Callister gives the lead actor the ability to fully immerse himself in a digital environment that his consciousness could even be trapped in it, and in episode 3: Crocodile, we see a device that makes sharing of memories possible.
Furthermore, the Season 4 stories particularly show us how seemingly simple technological decisions can go humanly wrong. This is more apparent in episodes 2 and 6.
In episode 2: Arkangel – we observe a child getting lost and the mother naturally getting very worried for the child’s safety. With her love and concern for the child, the mother makes the decision to get a rather advanced tracker implanted into the child. A device I can see many mothers seriously considering. Beyond what current trackers are capable of, i.e., knowing where someone is, this tracker can track body vitals and conditions, see what the child is seeing, with the option of even filtering out what the child is seeing, among other capabilities. But we soon see 
how such capabilities, i.e., constantly knowing what your child is looking at, having the power to filter and even know body conditions before the child does, goes wrong for both the mother and daughter. We see the daughter want to experiment with things, start to need her privacy as well as lie as teenagers would do, and we see the mother struggle with the need to know, control and filter the daughter. In a way, I actually think the mother became addicted to the device and the constant need of knowing what was the child was doing.
Addictions and sharing of experiences were also some of the topics that were touched on in the three stories told in episode 6: Black Museum. There is the doctor who is able to share the pain of his patients. Although at first he is able to help his patients through this shared experience, we soon see him become addicted to the pain and fear, that he eventually commits murder to get his fix. Then, we also see the ability to transfer consciousness in two of the stories. There is the story with the comatose wife and the other with the death-row in mate whose consciousness gets transferred into a hologram.
In the story of the comatose wife
, we can perhaps all understand why the husband and wife would make the decision to have the wife’s consciousness transferred in the husband. Who would not give their loved one the chance to talk, see and hug their child if they could? But having someone constantly commenting and criticizing what you look at, what you do, how your body reacts – all this on top of your own critical voice is a recipe for disaster, and we see in this story how it all goes wrong.
In addition to the above stories of season 4, there are notably other Black Mirror seasons that show us how the technology they present does go wrong, e.g., season 1, episode 3. That is one of the things I like about Black Mirror, that it always reminds us that as technology advances and permeates many aspects of our lives, as we immerse ourselves in it and it allows us to have shared experiences – there are several ways in which these technological advancements can go humanly wrong.
Also published on Medium.