[Warning: Contains Spoilers]
The first episode of the second season of the British TV series, Black Mirror (titled "Be Right Back") is a chilling glimpse into what life could be like if technological advancements help us try to replace loved ones who we have lost.
The episode starts with a young married couple moving into a house presumably located somewhere in the English countryside, and certainly quite a distance from the city. They arrive in a rented van with all their stuff, eat dinner and go to bed. The next day, the husband leaves to return the van but never comes back.
At the husband's funeral, a well-wisher tells the new widow about the option of paying for a software that constructs the virtual presence of a dead person, purely by pulling their online communications and posts available on the internet. Paying for such a service would entitle this widow to virtually communicate with her deceased husband. In her state of devastation, she is appalled by such a suggestion, and this causes her to break down hysterically.
Afterwards, however, when she learns that she is pregnant, her loneliness gets the better of her and she logs into the software and begins to exchange text messages with what is basically a bot masquerading as her husband. In time, and with her consent, the software manages to simulate her husband's voice, using old videos of him. The widow immerses herself in long phone conversations with the software-operated voice of her husband everyday.
It's not long before the voice she has grown re-acquainted with tells her about an off-shoot of this software still in the beta stage: an experimental technology that can create something akin to the clone of her dead husband using synthetic skin. It is an expensive proposition, but she takes the plunge, ultimately coming face to face with a life-size replica of her dead husband, who becomes her co-habitee.
The rest of the episode is focussed on the frustration she experiences coming to terms with an artificial body that looks like the man that used to be her husband, has some knowledge of his publicly expressed thoughts, but is largely lacking in all the other things that constituted her husband. This manifestation of her husband lacks the ability to emote by itself, or to be spontaneous unless commanded to. When she wants intimacy, this replicant draws a blank, not having interfaced with this aspect of the husband's personality even after combing his vast repertoire of tweets. Yet we find at the end of the episode that years later, this faux husband continues to live in her house (albeit in the attic and not the bedroom), and is someone who her daughter is permitted to meet on weekends.
Like all episodes of Black Mirror, this one provides ample food for thought. Overcoming death remains an unconquered territory, one that science is still grappling with making inroads into. This episode of Black Mirror shows us how science may try. In its usual chilling style, Black Mirror makes us wonder whether we even want science to go this far.
It is the year 2015. Internet communications and social media are an inescapable reality. Physical presence and human contact are slowly being overshadowed by their (seemingly) more pervasive virtual counterparts. We live in an era of over-sharing, where feelings are often reduced to a tag on a Facebook update, and wherethe last meal you ate is targeted less at your tastebuds and more for the viewing pleasure of your followers on Instagram. Withdrawing deeper and deeper into silence, and into our phones and tablets to virtually communicate with many simultaneously, while our loved ones sit in the same room and mirror us. Human presence has become almost dispensable. Yet why is it that we still cannot come to terms with death? In spite of our incessant urge to share virtually with as many people as possible with a sense of urgency, and to garner virtual thumbs ups for said sharing, it is ultimately human presence that we seem to crave on the loss of a loved one. The intangibles perceived and enjoyed through human contact, and while not on our phones.
Faced with the death of a loved one, we grieve. We grieve for ourselves, rather than for the departure of another being. It is human nature to be selfish. "Be Right Back" shows us how we may try to use technology to further our selfish agenda. A synthetic version of a dead person doesn't actually help resurrect the dead. It only helps the person who is alive and wants to assuage the grief he or she is experiencing. Dealing with the death of family or friends is a part of human life. Is it even possible to lead a complete human existence without having to go through it? Are we moving towards an age where we want technology to make life easier by making us less human? Where the process of death may be more manageable, but the process of living will be corrupted irreversibly by artifice.
And what of the disrespect to those departed souls, poor versions of whose presence we may try to re-create? Allowing these bad robotic carbon copies to gain prominence in our lives seems distasteful.
Getting accustomed to living a total lie with the seemingly unconvincing clone of a real person may have one of two consequences. It could either have the effect of tarnishing one's memories of the person as he/she really existed, doing grave injustice to those who are now dead, silent and defenceless. Or it could heighten our feelings of longing for them, with the grieving process becoming a lifelong albatross on our necks, never allowing us to move past it.
Both outcomes are quite unfortunate.
The first episode of the second season of the British TV series, Black Mirror (titled "Be Right Back") is a chilling glimpse into what life could be like if technological advancements help us try to replace loved ones who we have lost.
The episode starts with a young married couple moving into a house presumably located somewhere in the English countryside, and certainly quite a distance from the city. They arrive in a rented van with all their stuff, eat dinner and go to bed. The next day, the husband leaves to return the van but never comes back.
At the husband's funeral, a well-wisher tells the new widow about the option of paying for a software that constructs the virtual presence of a dead person, purely by pulling their online communications and posts available on the internet. Paying for such a service would entitle this widow to virtually communicate with her deceased husband. In her state of devastation, she is appalled by such a suggestion, and this causes her to break down hysterically.
Afterwards, however, when she learns that she is pregnant, her loneliness gets the better of her and she logs into the software and begins to exchange text messages with what is basically a bot masquerading as her husband. In time, and with her consent, the software manages to simulate her husband's voice, using old videos of him. The widow immerses herself in long phone conversations with the software-operated voice of her husband everyday.
It's not long before the voice she has grown re-acquainted with tells her about an off-shoot of this software still in the beta stage: an experimental technology that can create something akin to the clone of her dead husband using synthetic skin. It is an expensive proposition, but she takes the plunge, ultimately coming face to face with a life-size replica of her dead husband, who becomes her co-habitee.
The rest of the episode is focussed on the frustration she experiences coming to terms with an artificial body that looks like the man that used to be her husband, has some knowledge of his publicly expressed thoughts, but is largely lacking in all the other things that constituted her husband. This manifestation of her husband lacks the ability to emote by itself, or to be spontaneous unless commanded to. When she wants intimacy, this replicant draws a blank, not having interfaced with this aspect of the husband's personality even after combing his vast repertoire of tweets. Yet we find at the end of the episode that years later, this faux husband continues to live in her house (albeit in the attic and not the bedroom), and is someone who her daughter is permitted to meet on weekends.
Like all episodes of Black Mirror, this one provides ample food for thought. Overcoming death remains an unconquered territory, one that science is still grappling with making inroads into. This episode of Black Mirror shows us how science may try. In its usual chilling style, Black Mirror makes us wonder whether we even want science to go this far.
It is the year 2015. Internet communications and social media are an inescapable reality. Physical presence and human contact are slowly being overshadowed by their (seemingly) more pervasive virtual counterparts. We live in an era of over-sharing, where feelings are often reduced to a tag on a Facebook update, and wherethe last meal you ate is targeted less at your tastebuds and more for the viewing pleasure of your followers on Instagram. Withdrawing deeper and deeper into silence, and into our phones and tablets to virtually communicate with many simultaneously, while our loved ones sit in the same room and mirror us. Human presence has become almost dispensable. Yet why is it that we still cannot come to terms with death? In spite of our incessant urge to share virtually with as many people as possible with a sense of urgency, and to garner virtual thumbs ups for said sharing, it is ultimately human presence that we seem to crave on the loss of a loved one. The intangibles perceived and enjoyed through human contact, and while not on our phones.
Faced with the death of a loved one, we grieve. We grieve for ourselves, rather than for the departure of another being. It is human nature to be selfish. "Be Right Back" shows us how we may try to use technology to further our selfish agenda. A synthetic version of a dead person doesn't actually help resurrect the dead. It only helps the person who is alive and wants to assuage the grief he or she is experiencing. Dealing with the death of family or friends is a part of human life. Is it even possible to lead a complete human existence without having to go through it? Are we moving towards an age where we want technology to make life easier by making us less human? Where the process of death may be more manageable, but the process of living will be corrupted irreversibly by artifice.
And what of the disrespect to those departed souls, poor versions of whose presence we may try to re-create? Allowing these bad robotic carbon copies to gain prominence in our lives seems distasteful.
Getting accustomed to living a total lie with the seemingly unconvincing clone of a real person may have one of two consequences. It could either have the effect of tarnishing one's memories of the person as he/she really existed, doing grave injustice to those who are now dead, silent and defenceless. Or it could heighten our feelings of longing for them, with the grieving process becoming a lifelong albatross on our necks, never allowing us to move past it.
Both outcomes are quite unfortunate.
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