Black Mirror

After watching "The National Anthem" for the second time I found myself just as immersed in it as my first viewing. I already knew the Prime Minister's fate but the slow realization that he actually has to go through with the fornication is the real payoff. This idea of using the internet, specifically youtube, as vehicle for terrorism is great and shows how the internet can still be seen as the digital wild west. What I found particularly interesting was how the show addressed the way we use social media and how it is so prevalent in modern life.
 Once the video appears online it is impossible to remove it because of the endless copies made. This shows how the internet can serve as an endless archive and how it makes forgetting something impossible. This idea is also addressed when there is a disclaimer before the live shoot of the Prime Minister. The Government makes it illegal to own or replicate any form of the video, blacklisting it. I wonder if this also mean foe other countries or just Britain itself? The show also provides an example of sexting in order to receive information. Every time her source won't give her information she sends anther nude getting what she wants. This only leads to trouble when she is eventually shot.
The final twist of the episode is revealing that this whole plot was created by an artist. IT was the complete opposite of what everyone thought and will continue to think because of the coverup of that detail. This is a good commentary on how the media can use terrorists as a scapegoat for any threat. The fact that the artist chopped off his own finger and disguised it shows how media can be manipulated to alter what is thought to be true.

Some Thinking on Black Mirror

I’m not entirely sure if this was discussed at length in class, but in fear of repeating something someone had already said I avoided bringing up the allegory this episode plays toward the role of social media and, perhaps within that, its role in relation to celebrities and fame. It’s very obvious from the start of the episode that social media is playing a role in relation to the episode itself. (i.e. Youtube being the initial source of the ransom, Twitter being used as a litmus for public opinion, etc.) But the themes that present themselves without the technology I think say the most about it.
The Prime Minister must broadcast himself having sex with a pig. This is obviously the largest part of the allegory. He must, to the masses, present a facet of himself that does not accurately represent who he is, but he must do so to reach a desired end. In this, he becomes a student of the internet. He tries everything to prevent what happens from being associated with himself, but must, in the end, use his identity as the very tool with which he makes things happen. This is similar to the way we use Facebook. We use our identities to broadcast an image of ourselves that may or may not be accurate to who we are. It may be an exaggeration, as the artist in the episode may have seen the act of having sex with a pig. Or it could be a complete falsity, as the Prime Minister (PM) himself may have seen the act of having sex with a pig. In the end, the PM’s wife sees it as falsity and turns her back on him. But at the same time, there is the importance of the audience. People watch along regardless of whether or not they want to. Again, similar to social media in that there is always a flux of information regardless of receptivity of the viewer. Most important is the moment when the suggestion to turn it off is put forward and thereafter rejected. The way we consume this information becomes a false necessity. FOMO. A fear of missing out.
Another huge proponent is the news station attempting to cover the story. This facet of the episode presents itself as the war between social media and news media. Papers are dying out and televised news is day-by-day losing its legitimacy. The initial inability to cover the story comes from higher up, but it’s quickly realized that whether in the narrative of the episode or not, more information is coming through social media than through that of the television news. And the story continues to build momentum even after the news reporter is shot near death: a very representative moment for the state of news media in the fast world of social media.
The role of the artist plays more on the second paragraph’s subject matter in that it’s the necessity one feels to broadcast one’s self. The fact that in the end there is no necessity is probably the most important part of that, in that there truly is no necessity in the realm of social media. It’s a tool that manifests its own necessity. It’s as though someone invented a hammer to produce only hammers and then that same someone convinced everyone that without hammers we’re lost.
That’s about as much as I’ve sorted out in my head, but I think that’s about as much as is necessary.

Black Mirror Thoughts

Black Mirror, is a show that depicts the extreme ways advanced technology can affect our lives negatively. The first episode of the prime minister having sex with the pig is disturbing but it demonstrates the difficulty of balancing a family and a professional life. The prime minister chose to have sex with the pig because he was placed in a difficult situation: have sex with the pig or to let the princess die. As a result of having sex with the pig, this led to the disruption of his marriage. The first episode also highlighted the power of public opinion can have a huge affect on how successful a politician can be during their term. One can argue that the prime minister cared a lot about his perception in the public eye more than his marriage.

Marshal McLuhan would be proud: Reviewer calls new Apple Watch is "a natural extension of my body"

The New York Times ran this article/review of the new Apple watch, in which the reviewer states: "the Watch became something like a natural extension of my body — a direct link, in a way that I’ve never felt before, from the digital world to my brain. "

Think back to what McLuhan said about technology being an extension of the human body…

Because all media, from the phonetic alphabet to the computer, are extensions of man that cause deep and lasting changes in him and transform his environment. Such an extension is an intensification, an amplification of an organ, sense or function, and whenever it takes place, the central nervous system appears to institute a self-protective numbing of the affected area, insulating and anesthetizing it from conscious awareness of what’s happening to it. It’s a process rather like that which occurs to the body under shock or stress conditions, or to the mind in line with the Freudian concept of repression. I call this peculiar form of self-hypnosis Narcissus narcosis, a syndrome whereby man remains as unaware of the psychic and social effects of his new technology as a fish of the water it swims in. As a result, precisely at the point where a new media-induced environment becomes all pervasive and transmogrifies our sensory balance, it also becomes invisible.

This problem is doubly acute today because man must, as a simple survival strategy, become aware of what is happening to him, despite the attendant pain of such comprehension. The fact that he has not done so in this age of electronics is what has made this also the age of anxiety, which in turn has been transformed into its Doppelgänger — the therapeutically reactive age of anomie and apathy. But despite our self-protective escape mechanisms, the total-field awareness engendered by electronic media is enabling us — indeed, compelling us — to grope toward a consciousness of the unconscious, toward a realization that technology is an extension of our own bodies. We live in the first age when change occurs sufficiently rapidly to make such pattern recognition possible for society at large. Until the present era, this awareness has always been reflected first by the artist, who has had the power — and courage — of the seer to read the language of the outer world and relate it to the inner world.