How Close to Black Mirror Are We? | Hacker News Reader

How Close to Black Mirror Are We?

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I think it's an interesting thing how much people consider Black Mirror to be about the dangers of technology.

Black Mirror is about technology, and the dangers of people.

Charlie Brooker loves technology and makes no bones about it. It is perhaps a degree of irony that so many watch Black Mirror and blame the technology because they fail to see the Mirror.

Arguably it’s about both.

Much of the technology is dangerous in the way guns are dangerous.

It may be true that human behavior is what is reflected back to us, but the potential for danger co-emerges with the capability of the technology we’re using.

I would say most technology that is dangerous is so a way that lies in the range from Table-Saw to Asbestos. A table saw at one end is when it performs it's intended function but on something different to what it was designed for, with harmful consequences. The other end is asbestos where there is a harmful outcome that is completely incidental to the targeted function.

Very little technology is designed specifically to harm, but still more than I am happy with. On the other hand most would support the idea of employing such a means if their own survival is at stake. While it is easy to argue against attack drones in the abstract, when you consider the situation where Ukraine employed drones to effectively reduce the amount of bombing their country would receive, it's hard not to sympathise with someone who wants the bombs to stop.

It’s like saying “guns don’t kill people, people do.” Ok, but guns make it a lot easier and they amplify existing problems. With scalable technology, it’s more like “nuclear weapons don’t kill people, people do.”

There should at least be a way to declare a form of technology that is specifically designed to be able to cause harm.

I think I might use the term "Aw nope" for that. Or maybe an anagram of that to hide my disfavour.

I think that development of such things should be tightly regulated, but also that you should be clear to distinguish between things like that from things that are capable of doing harm or even likely to cause harm and how much intent it takes to cause that outcome. Angle grinders are very dangerous things, they harm quite a few people, but there is also an understanding that the vast majority of that harm is unintentional, and preventable with safeguards.

It think the site is an interesting exercise. If nothing else to show that science fiction doesn't have to happen like we might think it does. There is no space elevator, but 1 million people in the air at any given time. There is no matrix, but many lifetimes have been spent in World of Warcraft. Reality doesn't need to switch context for things to change, which is often what science fiction does.

This doubles as an excellent episode guide, I was wondering what I've already watched and what I want to watch again and the short analysis style of this is superb.

That said, I don't agree with the assessments that much. For example, the Metalhead episode which is about a robotic dog chasing people is stated as %40 achieved but IMHO it is %90 achieved and it just takes a will for this to happen. They are already doing it on the battlefield in Ukraine BTW, just needs better batteries for similar fiercity.

I was about to post Metalhead (https://www.howclosetoblackmirror.com/metalhead) but found you got there first. Interestingly I read that the initial draft had the robots being remotely piloted by humans, which would have been much less frightening (and it would have ruined the apocolyptic setting). The only real fantasy element are the super-high density batteries and extremely fast solar charging. The embed-in-the-skin tracker tech doesn't seem realistic, either - but I suppose if you have those batteries it's possible. Each tag appears separately powered, and needs enough power to transmit through walls and over great distance. The AI and robotics are, ironically, the least fantasy of the elements.

The theme of technology continuing without humans was treated in Ray Bradbury's excellent, melancholic, still-relevant tale written in 1950 "There Will Come Soft Rains". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains_(sh...

This has to be engagement bait built so that you can get mad at the bar%'s lol.

But we're 90% of the way toward demons' telling meek sales assistants to commit dark acts to prevent the apocalypse in 1979!

‘Shut Up and Dance’ at 60% seems low. The three technologies the article references (Hacker blackmail, Webcam spying, Online coercion and extortion) all seem to be realities today. It’s one of the episodes that I think it most likely to reflect the present day.

Yeah that is 100% straight.

There’s already a common type of email spam that says, essentially, “I hacked your computer and watched you jerk off through your webcam, send me bitcoin or I’ll publish it along with your porn history.”

This is basically the premise of that Black Mirror episode, except if the spammer had actually hacked you for real and wasn’t just shotgun-blasting the message to stupid people.

The first episode of season 7, Common People, messed with me pretty hard. I've always been a little hostile toward subscriptions services, but... damn.

It seems far away -- but really if Neuralink et al manage to correct brain disorder(s) in the near future, and slapped a subscription on it, we'd be there.

The thing is though, this story is a metaphor for life we’re living right now. Consider up in Canada the paper mills that were built near water streams, dumping mercury into indigenous people's food.

Many of which corporations exploited and/or mislead chiefs into believing the project would be safe.

Same premise, different package.

Oh damn, I just watched the first half and had to turn it off. Enshittification, the movie.

I don't understand the percentages. Loch Henry is at 80% despite all criteria being reached.

To me, Loch Henry is already reality. People treat true crime documentaries and podcasts as pure entertainment and lose sight of the actual people involved. What's the gap?

How did they fail to mention a British PM did fuck a pig? Just for funnies too not to "save" anyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate

The article is not proof of your claim AFAICS?

The story ground on for ages, there is plenty about it online. Sources were always suspect and evidence thin. But it is noted that if true, it wasn’t the worst thing he has done.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-most-shocking-thing...

This is just an episode summary and arbitrary percentage assigned by the author, effectively another ‘which avengers character are you?’ Clickbait trash. Is this really the quality of a normal HN post?

I do think that at least on the conceptual level there is some more merit to it. People often through around remarks like "just like Black Mirror", so I think it's interesting to dive into it a bit more, and decypher whether those are just vapid remarks or there is some substance behind it.

Especially on some of the more technologically advanced topics the average viewers might not be aware that those technolgies already exist in the early stages.

But yes, the execution is quite lacking (hopefully it's just a start?), with most of the content trying to mostly tick the content boxes rather than being of substance, and there being quite thin justification to the percentages. (What needs to happen for Lock Henry to go beyond 80%? I'd wager apart from that concrete instance happening we are essentially there.)

> Clickbait trash. Is this really the quality of a normal HN post?

Hi, it's 2025. The whole internet has been like this for more than a decade now, and it's getting worse by the year!

I disagree that this is low quality. Blog posts are often a summaries plus opinion. I don’t think HN would ban blogs and I don’t see how this is different. It does not seem like the ‘rate my character’ paradigm you reference.

As a Brit, I'm disappointed the first one regarding the Prime Minister and the pig hit 80% based on some vague social media trends rather than a rather more obvious connection between a [former] Prime Minister and a pig...

Every sci-fi is a contemporary author's idea of the future. The further our the more unlikely the idea. Would love the site to be extended to any sci-fi. The percentages could be automated. How close to Dune are we?

I don't think it's true, sci-fi rarely tries to be an accurate prediction of the future.

Rather it's talking about the present, by accentuating some trends of the present to make people think about it. Black Mirror in particular is all about that, it's exaggerating some trends from the present to make us aware of them and the potential consequences if pushed too far.

If the bars are any accurate, the fact that the last season is the closest to reality, would be an indication that it becomes less imaginative.

That's actually the second-to-last season. Season 7 has been out since April.

I never made it past the pig-fucking episode...

You've missed out on a lot.

I haven't seen any episode. Lots of people told me i should watch them all, but i'm just scared i will feel depressed for a long time if i did.

If you also avoid movies and books of the same ilk for the same reasons, yeah, I can see that.

To me, they're just great SF stories (well, the first three(?) seasons before Netflix bought them and Americanized them): some poignant, some horror-ish, some uplifting.

I found the "unforeseen consequences" of technology fascinating, but that's just me.

I get 'too close to reality' vibes whenever i hear or read something about Black Mirror. Can't really explain it clearly. Maybe i should just try it. It's not high on my list though :) I do love the Love, Death and Robots series though.

No, I get the "too close to reality" vibes. I actually like that.

LD&R ROCKED! At least the first season; I still watch it regularly (well, I did before Netflix EOLed my TV). Season 2 was forgettable. Season 3 kinda made up for Season 2.

Metalhead is amazing.

That one really is "too close to reality" as in, it's now a reality, at least on the battlefield, IIUC.

I tell friends to skip that first episode if they want to get into the show.

same. weird choice for ep1.

Maybe, but as bad as it is, the real world caught up very quickly.

40% to Striking Vipers is the most depressing aspect of this site

Yeah, we should be at like 80% by now.

Odd that nosedive isn’t at 100%. Even here on this site, right now, everyone votes. Votes and flags restrict either obscure or hide your posts. in the case of things like uber you’re kicked off, can’t work based on ratings as well.

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