by
Murtaza Hussain
There’s
no real plot in the “Metalhead” episode in the new season of
“Black Mirror.” The star of the episode is a small,
uncommunicative black robot that walks on all fours and is armed with
a pistol stored in its front leg. Who controls the robot, if anyone,
is never divulged. The four-legged mechanical creature operates
seemingly on its own and for its own purposes. Over the course of the
40-minute episode, it hunts down a woman desperately fleeing through
a forest, as she tries in vain to evade its sensors.
For
those unfamiliar with the show, “Black Mirror” is a science
fiction series on Netflix about a near-future in which new
technologies reap terrible unintended consequences on our lives; they
strip away personal independence, undermining our societal values and
sometimes letting loose uncontrollable violence. As terrifying as
they are, the technologies depicted in the show are not outlandish.
Like the autonomous robot in “Metalhead,” they reflect easily
conceivable, near-term advances upon currently existing technologies,
such as drones.
Since
the first detonations of atomic bombs in the 20th century, pop
culture has been morbidly fascinated by the realization that humanity
has developed tools powerful enough to destroy itself. But the malign
technologies depicted in “Black Mirror” are more subtle than
nuclear weapons. Most of the show’s episodes deal with advances in
robotics, surveillance, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence
– fields that happen to be key areas for tech companies in the real
world. The creators of the series demonstrate how, left unchecked,
the internal logic of these new technologies can bring about the
destruction of their owners.
“Black
Mirror’s” slick production values and acting have won wide
critical acclaim. But its social commentary also seems to have struck
a nerve with a public that has begun evincing confusion, fear, and
alienation over the consequences of new consumer technologies. A 2015
study by Chapman University found that three out of five of the top
fears Americans have were related to the consequences of emerging
technologies. The potential of automation to wipe out millions of
U.S. jobs and artificial intelligence’s potential to undermine
democracy have been well-documented. But the phenomena of
livestreamed murders, online terrorist recruitment, and social media
threats of nuclear apocalypse have helped create an environment of
increasing pessimism.
It’s
worth reflecting on how we got to this point.
In
1992, before the spread of the internet, American cultural critic
Neil Postman wrote a short book, titled “Technopoly: The Surrender
of Culture to Technology.” Postman argued that our modern idea of
technology was becoming dangerously warped. Instead of developing new
technologies to achieve acknowledged public goals, we had begun to
take technological advance as an end unto itself. Without a strong
cultural and political context to determine what should be invented
and why, we risked undermining both our civic culture and our
democracy in the face of powerful new technologies that operated
according to their own logic. Rather than creating inventions to
fulfill our needs, Postman warned that we might soon begin adapting
ourselves to meet the needs of our inventions.
“Black
Mirror” depicts a nightmare version of Postman’s prediction.
Technologies like virtual reality and social network rankings –
blindly adopted in the belief that they will make life better –
gradually become vehicles for authoritarian social control, and even
the enslavement of their owners. The show reflects a growing trend in
popular culture. In recent years, other science fiction series like
“Westworld” and “H+” have also focused on the dark side of
emerging technologies, including robotics and artificial
intelligence. In his recent book, “Why Liberalism Failed,” Notre
Dame political science professor Patrick Deneen made this suggestion:
Most
examples of this recent genre seem to reflect a widespread foreboding
about a shared sense of powerlessness, and even the potential for a
new kind of bondage to the very technology that is supposed to
liberate us. These movies and programs portray how, in our optimistic
and even hubristic belief that our technology will usher in a new age
of freedom, we discover in various ways that we are subjects to those
very technologies. Far from controlling our technology for our own
betterment, we find that the technology ends up either ruling or
destroying us.
The
powerlessness many people feel in the face of new technologies may
have something to do with the undemocratic nature of their
development. People naturally fear what they depend on but have no
understanding or control over. In the last 10 to 15 years, many
long-held social and political norms have been washed away by
technologies that have helped contribute to a crisis of faith in
American democracy. Silicon Valley companies have been remarkably
opaque about the future implications of their research and
development programs, which, among other things, many Americans
plausibly believe will lead to the loss of their jobs.
When
major tech executives do speak up, they often make disturbing
statements about the looming death of cherished public norms like
personal privacy. In a 2010 interview, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
stated that “the days of you having a different image for your work
friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably
coming to an end pretty quickly,” declaring further that “having
two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”
Even
if the most dire warnings about rogue artificial intelligence
programs destroying humanity never come to pass, we have already
sacrificed much of our personal autonomy to technologies whose
underlying philosophies were unclear when they were introduced to the
public. There is a growing backlash to this kind of corporate
authoritarianism. Calls to break up tech companies under federal
antitrust laws are increasing, while disillusioned former Silicon
Valley executives have become increasingly vocal about the negative
social side effects of the programs they helped develop.
Technological utopianism is slowly giving way to an acknowledgement
that technologies aren’t value-neutral, and it’s the role of a
functioning society to govern how they are utilized.
The
robot in the “Metalhead” episode of “Black Mirror” was
inspired by an actual robot developed by the engineering firm Boston
Dynamics. Named the SpotMini, the device is described by its creators
as a “nimble robot that handles objects, climbs stairs, and will
operate in offices, homes and outdoors.” A video of the SpotMini
walking around, doing household tasks and righting itself after a
fall is posted on the company website. Unlike its evil twin in
“Metalhead,” the robot in Boston Dynamics’s promotional videos
seems helpful, even friendly.
It’d
be nice to imagine a future in which robots like the SpotMini are
used to help us around the house, rather than hunt down and kill our
fellow humans as they flee in terror. If the nightmare future
depicted in shows like “Black Mirror” can be avoided, it will
only come by asserting public oversight of the Silicon Valley
companies whose policies are dictating the future shape of our
societies — as well as our personal lives.
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