Tom Jolliffe on modern sci-fi, the technology around the corner and how it may destroy us…

As far as Science Fiction goes, the film and TV shows that audiences have watched over the years have often featured some sense of foreboding. What happens if… This could be James Cameron’s Terminator which shows a world in which human beings keep on pushing the limits of technology to achieve military dominance, only for those machines to become self-aware and enslave humanity. It’s our ever-growing greed and quest for perfection that ultimately pushes us further away from our own humanity. As technology develops, everything becomes easier, but at what price?

Like Cameron’s vision, plenty of science fiction films and TV shows warn us of the dangers of crossing human ambition with technology. As far as human technological development is concerned though, there have been huge strides forward since the turn of the century. From gadgets, to communications, medical, to programming for digital tech like apps. Things which carry no physical entity. Merely pure data. What we have now is a state in technology which, like never before, allows us to predict what is likely to come in 10 years, 20 years. We’re seeing the early burgeoning stages of virtual reality. In fact it’s already sold as home entertainment. Turn on your Playstation, put on your headset and you’re immersed into a new world.

In recent years there have been some solid enough science fiction films and TV shows but a couple that really stood out were Ex Machina, and on the small screen, Black Mirror. Black Mirror is the brainchild of Charlie Brooker. Known also as a satirist and broadcaster, Black Mirror is an anthology series which Brooker has written the majority of (as well as producing). There’s some great episodes, some solid ones, and one or two fillers over the 6 year run, but they are almost always prescient and deeply foreboding. The show never delves too far into the future and whilst never really implicitly stated, most episodes at a guess tend to take place no more than 20 years in the future. The technology portrayed within each episode (particularly if said tech is the focal point of that story) is always believable, or a fine tuned development on what we already have in place.

Black Mirror, with the odd variation, tends to focus on external technology effecting us (social media for example), and internal technology controlling us (such as brain implants). So looking first at the external. As we are in 2017, social media represents where we are as a society. It is a depiction of reality that to the addicted, becomes more important than reality. How many times have you burned out an online conversation and interaction with a friend, to the point you have no need to meet them in real life? How many times have you looked at the amount of likes on one of your posts as if it somehow mattered? We’ve probably all done these things at some stage. It’s a filter too. We can show the world how great everything is for us. Alternatively we can fish for sympathy from those who will mostly remain behind a display screen elsewhere in the world to us.

In the first episode of Black Mirror, Brooker injects the script with every fibre of his satirical being. It’s a searing scything of modern politics, but more so a timely look at the prospect that social media and faux interaction, is chipping away at our empathy. In episode one (The National Anthem) A popular member of the Royal family is kidnapped. The kidnappers demand that the PM shags a pig, live on TV, or the princess will die. The government run around desperately trying to figure out what to do and keep a lid on things, but of course almost instantly the kidnappers demands have gone viral and the PM’s task becomes a matter of national interest. Now his PR team work relentlessly to not only try and find the kidnappers before the deadline, but also keep tabs on his popularity ratings with the next election in mind. It’s darkly funny and biting, but also insightful (ironically the episode was also written and aired before the revelation about David Cameron’s tryst with a dead pig came to light). This idea that going viral with such ferocity can become a matter of national importance is becoming more and more prevalent. The internet gives everyone a voice. It gives us all a connection (almost like…a web?)and it allows us for better or worse to unload our opinions on every matter, whether trivial or of national interest. That might mean after a referendum largely focused on immigration it might bring out the most knuckle dragging slovenly fuck trumpets of society to club out vitriolic hate messages about migrants, or it might allow the holier than thou to spread love with having the forethought to appreciate an alternative opinion. In whatever way, we’ve probably all been a keyboard warrior of some inclination at times.

In the episode Nosedive (co-written by actress Rashida Jones), the idea of online popularity is central to the story. Everyone has a score that is affected by (and affects) your standing in life, who you interact with and how. You act nice, you’ll be given a score by that person (And you will score in turn). Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) strives to attain a top score which would help her attain a new apartment in a swanky complex. She’s invited to a wedding, of which the entry requirements are beyond her score level (her former best friends wedding). A chain of events slowly begin to negatively affect her score. Soon it gets to the point she can’t get around. She becomes akin to a Leper when her score hits rock bottom. It’s an exaggeration of course, but people still put genuine importance on hits, scores, rankings, shares etc. Social media’s power has been well covered in Black Mirror (see also the most recent episode, Hated In The Nation). An idea, an entity that doesn’t really exist, begins taking over your life.

What of technology being implanted into our brain? This is an element further away given the intricacy of the human brain, but still, some things we’ve seen in Black Mirror will undoubtedly be seen in our lifetime. In The Entire History Of You, implants record all our interactions. It allows us to play back every conversation. Liam (Toby Kebbell) soon becomes obsessed with trying to interpret interactions with his wife, suspecting her of having an affair. Again it boils down to this notion that being given a certain ability or power is not necessarily conducive to mental health. If you can essentially sky plus your life, how many times would you revisit and re-interpret the same things, over and over? Eventually you will see things which aren’t there, or discover things, that ultimately, you don’t want to.

What if something implanted into your brain can be controlled or affected by an outside source? In the episode White Christmas, Matt (John Hamm) interacts with Potter (Rafe Spall). Matt recounts tales revolving around his ability to work with people via their brain implants. From helping a lonely guy score a date with a beautiful woman, to being “blocked” by his wife. An idea that these implants can physically affect who and what we see. You never want to see an ex? Block them. Not just from social media, from your reality. Ultimately Matt is engaging with Potter under false pretences, really there to try and dig out a repressed memory from Potter, relating to a crime. Brooker also covers the notion of reality distortion via implants in several episodes whether looking at the possible future of recreational gaming, or militaristic control.

Right now we live in a time where our own reality can be affected not only by social media, but mainstream media too. We’ve had two elections in the space of a year, driven by newspaper propaganda, perpetuating ideas and myths in an attempt to manipulate the outcome. Is there a moral line crossed? Of course. Are the super rich moguls and bankers running the country and taking us in and out of economic crashes trying to shift the blame on to immigrants or the poor? Probably. How long before external influence can be replaced (or used in conjunction with) internal?

Better than human? In the last 30 years factories and industries have closed or changed dramatically. Human beings are slowly becoming fazed out by machine. Do you make a beeline to the self checkouts to speed up (in principal, but rarely in delivery…yet) your exit from the supermarket? Nowadays in a factory, where five people may have worked a section, it may just be one person overseeing a machine. Sci-Fi has foreshadowed our extinction by machine countless times. Ex Machina took a very intimate and minimalist approach to predicting the beginning of the end of humanity, or perhaps foreseeing a next stage of evolution. Perhaps in the evolutionary scale it’s a shift from bio to mechanical.

Written and directed by Alex Garland, it’s a simple story. A programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) is tasked with evaluating the human qualities of a synthetic woman, created by his reclusive boss. Over the course of a week he interacts with the A.I (Alicia Vikander). The film is insightful, engaging and very well written and ultimately Ava must develop the intrinsic art of human deviousness and manipulation to maintain her own survival. In finally gathering these abilities, without being born with the chains of empathy (which try as humanity might, we can never fully leave behind) she truly takes the next step forward in evolution. Pure, unadulterated self-preservation.

So how long before A.I overtakes us? We’re currently striving to push artificial humans to a whole new level. Even in Japan, sex dolls are becoming almost disturbingly popular in a nation where artificial relationships are increasingly replacing real ones (and subsequently birth rates are dropping). It may only be a matter of years before the inanimate becomes aware.

Tom Jolliffe