A new progressivism, one that embraces construction over obstruction, must find new allegories to think about technology and the future
Black Mirror fails to consistently explore the duality of technology and our reactions to it. It is a critical deficit. The show mimics the folly of Icarus and Daedalus – the original tech bros – and the hubris of Jurassic Park’s Dr Hammond. Missing are the lessons of the Prometheus myth, which shows fire as a boon for humanity, not doom, though its democratization angered benevolent gods. Absent is the plot twist of Pandora’s box that made it philosophically useful: the box also contained hope and opportunity that new knowledge brings. While Black Mirror explores how humans react to technology, it too often does so in service of a dystopian narrative, ignoring Isaac Asimov’s observation: that humans are prone to irrationally fear or resist technology.
Despite him being a tech bro and everything, I do think we need more shows like Star Trek these days to show us what a functional future with technology could look like. I think the only examples we see any more in popular culture are dystopian, and I think we are starting to believe that those are the only possible outcomes of the path we are on. Even Star Trek these days is pretty dark.
We need to again try to imagine a world in which the better half of humanity succeeds.
That’s a relatively new phenomenon. All tech media was positive and the stuff of dreams until around the 2010s. Because we were seeing a steady and noticeable shift in the power dynamics. We were being pulled deeper under a capitalist nightmare instead of flying in a techno futuristic dreamscape. We couldn’t see anything but the piling negative aspects of our technology: it’s killing us, it’s enslaving us, its being used to spy on us, we’re being told it’s a wonder but we keep finding out it’s a horror. This isn’t on us for not being enlightened enough to see asimov’s words. We’re too aware of the active manipulation and torture. They made us the product, and they made the things we bought spy machines and tools of manipulation and deception.
We need to create better, freer tech, free from the oligarchs currently wringing us all dry while they build their multimillion dollar doomsday bunkers with the money they’re stealing from us if we are going to build the better world in which the better half of humanity succeeds. Art imitates life. And currently they’re outsourcing art to the oligarchs machines that are 10000x worse for the planet and the power dynamics.
Yes, I loved classic Trek for showing a better a future, where humans have moved beyond our greed, prejudice, and self-destructive tendencies. That was the through line in TOS and TNG, even if it wasn’t always 100% on-point and didn’t always age well (you need to view TOS in its historical context to get past the baked-in 1960s sexism, for example).
There’s a place for cautionary tales, and there’s a place for aspirational tales.
I liked Discovery well enough for what it was, but I hated its picture of a future where good humans are the exception rather than the rule.
Nowadays, I think solarpunk is where its at.
Yeah similar to what Vince Gilligan said, we need to make more stories about good people, because the media illiterate just start glamorizing the bad characters and completely miss the point