On Tuesday my reading group and I met for the first time, and we all introduced ourselves to each other in the morning session. It was interesting to be acquainted with people outside of my course, and be able to have the chance to know them and start working with them. After we presented our background in terms of studies and origin, we started dividing our work and everyone got to read one text on the reading list. I got to read the last text on the reading list, which was ‘’ Enacting Reflection Through Sci-fi ‘‘, Black Mirror and Philosophy by Sergio Urueña.
The text discussed that human’s vision of the future often connects to technology and this is because it plays such a huge role in our current life’s. Technology is and will play an important role in our future.
Thinking of an example in our daily lives, phones have already primarily affected and influenced our lifestyles. This has already affected how we engage with our surroundings and comes with the question of how our future life with technology will look like, how it will change, and if there will be any risks involved.
Sci-fi is a genre that comes closest to how the future could be envisioned and can show good examples of that.
The reason some Sci-fi movies become so real is because there are vast many connections to reality involved which convinces us to believe how the future could potentially look like.
Sci-fi also encaptures different forms of how various future worlds and realities could appear. It also presents ideas connected to science and technology.
You can additionally see more people focusing on science and technology connected to society, and finding ways with philosophy together to gain insight about the future.
Sci-fi goes further than simply entertaining, by showing what risks these technologies can be involved in the present and in the future if we are not cautious. Humans need to be prepared for such changes and need to develop tactics considering politics.
Black Mirror is a good example of a Netflix series to show philosophies about the future while using tools and elements out of our present world. It also shows how humans and technology could be connected in the future world and brings up concerns at the same time, between politics, technology, and science.
Further than that, Black Mirror also highlights current concerns connected to tech and makes it even less just about futuristic stories, but just a pointer towards them.
It expresses the fears many in our society have currently regarding tech (e.g., scared of losing privacy, changing identity, etc.). The series intends to create messages to people, to start thinking and reflecting on our current day and what could possibly happen.
The topic Sci-fi also connects closely to philosophy and raises questions of how we can act in the here and now.
But the question also arises as to how can such a series help us to be more innovative in our future life?
To revert again, this could also help us to change our current reality, maybe for the better.
Considering the way we perceive the future influences our thinking in the present and how we work towards it. This can include decisions regarding science and politics for instance.
The fictive stories we see in Black Mirror can later influence future inventions as people will start to make research around it.
Nevertheless, we need to keep in mind that Sci-Fi only can influence a few aspects of our life but does not determine the actual world we live in now.
Even if Black Mirror ideas won’t most likely exist in the future, how could we somehow use them to develop future technologies?
If humans realize the risks of technologies, social interventions are required to be inputted earlier.
They need to see those risks and find alternative ways for innovation to be pursued instead.
Moreover, the present must be understood better by our society to make responsible decisions for the future.
Generally, there are two ways to build and create the future: Either develop scenarios or science fiction.
The pros of fictional stories are that they can reach many age groups and all of them can be inspired to start their research from there. Series, such as Black Mirror, communicate only possibilities to people and want to make them understand better how the world could look like. The overall goal of Sci-fi is for people to pursue their outlook on the future. Even though films must work with speculations, everything could become a potential and legitim future.
Nanotechnology is an example that promises new tech but is also very speculative. Not everything that we get to see is possible obviously, but different voices must be heard to rethink the environment we live in. Even Black Mirror conveys ideas in the series that are far from reality. However, those designs in the series can still be worthwhile to realize we have to act early enough to develop systems together.
The general title ‘’Black Mirror’’ developed from the fact that tech screens are black when they are turned off and the show is provided to society to show humans and their connection to reality. The series aims to warn of how we build things and tech in the future to avoid a crisis. It should remind us that the future is in our hands and directs us to think about the reality as well as the future.
After sharing this information with my group, we discussed it and gave our opinion on it. We agreed that Black Mirror is one of the actual realistic stories when it comes to Sci-fi, therefore it can be quite terrifying for people. Many other Sci-fi films are just far away from reality and for this reason also not as useful when it comes to stimulating people to create ideas. Black Mirror creates relatable stories and works with current-day tools we all agreed with, and encourages us to take technology seriously.
We also mentioned that all humans are already aware by now of what is happening with technology, but no one really tries to make a change and B.M. presents humanity again on a silver platter with what might happen if we just ignore it, even if it is scary. On the other hand, we also realized that many people might feel powerless. The group brought up a good example of the iPhone and how Apple manipulates us into buying new items all the time by making our phones we use slower and weaker with the battery. This was a good example of how the system controls us. Those with powerful positions within these companies sell future dreams that make us want to buy their products. Additionally, we understand that technology sells us the idea of making our life easier, but actually makes us busier and makes us more stressed, seeing it sells a belief but not a reality.
Besides that, we find people’s emotions are mostly manipulated to persuade them to buy products, just like with NFT’s or the Metaverse. During Covid, we all realized how much we need human connection and how much we do not like overusing technology. It made us realize what we really desired for our future, being less technology. Many people recognized after the pandemic how irrelevant these tools to us in life really are since we need money to buy food and not something that does not exist in reality.
That is why we see nature being integrated progressively into architecture, as humans seek the connection to nature, along with other humans.
Finally, we came to the topic of design with this and mentioned how important it was for designers to know the purpose that their creations should serve and that being aesthetically beautiful is often not enough for the current day situation. They require the right knowledge in order to create useful tools and need background knowledge to understand it.
Personally, I enjoyed being in a group with new people not just from my course, but also from the MACCC course. That makes it possible to collaborate not just now but also in the future after this MA course. It makes it possible to hear new insights and opinions from people with totally different backgrounds. We also were able to share stories from our life in other countries related to the topic and in general.