No longer do we live in a world in which science fiction is fiction. What does it mean for our imagination to have finally caught up with reality? Today, to live is to be in constant “electronic symbiosis” : a partner in the “dance of repulsion and attraction, violence and creation, humanity and the machine.” By considering this simultaneous repulsion and attraction” toward technology, we can begin to understand the seemingly ironic existence of a television series that warns viewers of the dangers of technology.
As noted in one Atlantic article, the title “Black Mirror” has a double meaning. Besides referring to the “cold, shiny screens” of the devices we’re so attached to, it also “offers a message that technology reflects the darkest elements of humanity right back at us.”
Said American science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson in a 2015 interview with The Guardian, “…we’re living in a big science fiction novel…show more content… In the episode, a status-driven woman named Lacie drives herself to insanity in an attempt to gain online validation. In Lacie’s world, everybody has the capability of “ranking” strangers on a scale of one to five stars. This, of course, creates a slippery slope that leads to empty, fake interactions. Those in Lacie’s world would do anything to obtain a five-star rating. Thus, they put on a new façade for every interaction, becoming the person they think others would like them to be. They live for their rating.
A biting social satire, “Nosedive” recalls the all-too-familiar anxiety of posting on social media then waiting in agony for feedback, all the while wondering: “Why doesn’t anybody like it?”—a question that soon transforms into the dark, “Why doesn’t anybody like
