Why should you watch Black Mirror?

Since 2011, a few people have been enjoying a British series about a dystopic future, in which technology plays a fundamental role in people’s lives. However, it was only after its inclusion on Netflix that Black Mirror gained worldwide recognition, in addition to having a whole series about to be launched (2016) in the streaming service. There will be twelve new episodes, which is innovative for the series itself, since it would usually launch only three episodes per season and a Christmas special. The episodes are completely independent one from another, allowing viewers to get in touch with several different characters, contexts and dilemmas.

But why should I watch Black Mirror?

One should not be fooled into thinking that this is another sci-fi series. Black Mirror, as the very name already points out, is an especulative exercise about the very nature of human behavior when faced with technological development. The themes are extremely human, found in several (and century-old) philosophical studies. For the lovers of the series, its greates achievements are the narratives in which technology facilitates some current aspirations, such as the (video) storage os memories and affordable artificial intelligence, among others. In the series, the psycological impacts of online interactions, such as the mass media broadcasting of radical politics and the infiltration of retributive justice in popular conversations, acquire absurd proportions.

Necessary and not so distant reflections

Of course, these innovations are also accompanied by relections about the collateral damage of these technologies. In an episode regarding artificial intelligence, for example, a wife who just lost her husband has to deal with the challenges of maintaining daily contact with a robot version of her loved one. All of his wishes, manners, personality, phisical traits and personal information are extracted from social networks, e-mail accounts and private conversations.Even though technology enabled the creation of a robot exactly like her ex-husband, would this be a healthy way to deal with the death and the lost of a loved one? Are these relationships between human beings and artificial intelligence real, satisfactory, or even healthy?
Another episode proposes a universe in which memories are not organically stored in the brain, but in a device implanted in each individual. Without creating heroes or villains, the plot follows the night of a couple, during and after a dinner with friends. Between nuances in this universe, like the fun aspects of projecting memories on TV, or the rejection of one of the characters to technology, greater questions arise: what does it mean to remember? Or even to forget? How does this contribute to the current notion of what a human being is, and how can it change?

So far, you can only enjoy the seven episodes available on Netflix. While the new batch of episodes is not released, whoever likes this sort of theme should watch series like Mr. Robot!