A new progressivism, one that embraces construction over obstruction, must find new allegories to think about technology and the future
Black Mirror fails to consistently explore the duality of technology and our reactions to it. It is a critical deficit. The show mimics the folly of Icarus and Daedalus – the original tech bros – and the hubris of Jurassic Park’s Dr Hammond. Missing are the lessons of the Prometheus myth, which shows fire as a boon for humanity, not doom, though its democratization angered benevolent gods. Absent is the plot twist of Pandora’s box that made it philosophically useful: the box also contained hope and opportunity that new knowledge brings. While Black Mirror explores how humans react to technology, it too often does so in service of a dystopian narrative, ignoring Isaac Asimov’s observation: that humans are prone to irrationally fear or resist technology.
Yes and no, because I think a thing fiction can’t do is repeat itself, so they must find interesting new angles in which they could reflect possible futures. The very much most likely future of whatever the thing is becoming an ad-laden, buggy, infinite-money ponzi scheme until it’s abandoned 3-72 months after its release and thrown into a landfill isn’t that interesting to see episode after episode.