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To be fair, somebody will always decide what you wrote was a warning and they should fear it, even if you specifically intended a utopia, just as people insist

To be fair, somebody will always decide what you wrote was a warning and they should fear it, even if you specifically intended a utopia, just as people insist on rooting for and even imitating the bad guys from stories because they misunderstood "cool" as "good". Example: Some people think San Junipero, the one positive Black Mirror episode with an actual Happily Ever After romantic ending is a dystopian vision. Some people think the Primer, the technological device at the heart of Diamond Age, is the problem, not the Neo-Victorian aristocrats like Elizabeth's parents with their pseudo-colonial control over part of China, not the huge corporations whose greed is tearing the world apart and their engineers like Fiona's father, nor the Cyberpunks left over from a previous era like Nell's father - no the problem is the machine. In the Tweet framing it's easy, it's named a Torment Nexus and the book is literally titled "Don't Create The Torment Nexus" but what about the Horseless Carriage? The Novel? The Television? Are we creating the Urban Sprawl, the Wasted Youth, are we helping to Manufacture Consent ? Or maybe these are Freedom and Art for the Masses ? Framing.

pksebben 3y ago
Okay, yeah. But even from a pretty hardcore moral relativist POV... > "mercenary spyware", AI war targeting, and death drones Are not super easy to justify. Like, sure some people obviously think those ought to be a thing, but those people are dicks.
nojs 3y ago
> San Junipero, the one positive Black Mirror episode with an actual Happily Ever After romantic ending You forgot Hang the DJ :)
kibwen 3y ago
> Some people think San Junipero, the one positive Black Mirror episode with an actual Happily Ever After romantic ending is a dystopian vision. IIRC, after the couple prances away hand-in-hand into the sunset, the camera pulls back through the fourth wall to reveal the darkened server room in which their minds are being emulated, blinkenlights glittering in the darkness among the monotone drone of case fans, zooming out to reveal an endless row of servers receding into the distant blackness in a scene reminiscent of The Matrix. If the showrunners intended it to be unambiguously happy, I feel like they would have omitted that part... Or maybe I'm hallucinating, because I found the implications utterly horrifying, much to my partner's consternation.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  > If the showrunners intended it to be unambiguously happy, I feel like they would have omitted that part... I think this has the same direct purpose as my favourite modern Doctor Who scene but with different larger strategy. To tell the audience something explicitly, because it's not necessarily obvious and otherwise not everybody will have guessed. Often the Doctor understands what's going on and the audience are learning as they go, but in "The Girl In The Fireplace" the Doctor never actually knows why this spaceship chose this girl, in this time. The audience does at the end though, because we pull out to show the spaceship's name. Both the women know exactly what we're shown at the end of San Junipero. That "Heaven is a place on Earth" in a very literal sense, but while it's explained somewhat, the details aren't mentioned because they'd be clunky as exposition - hence the explicit visualization of the data centre where they're running. You aren't alone in finding this horrifying, but for Charlie Brooker, myself and a large number of people this is the best case scenario - and since Charlie wrote the show...
- godelski 3y ago
  Not to mention that Black Mirror's entire agenda is near-Sci-Fi horror. The episode is specifically about getting trapped in nostalgia, a non-existent past. Yes, love is found in this pursuit, but so it death. All the music in the show is about living in a box and forgetting about the real world. Other characters talk about forgetting they're in the simulation and they talk about how they live in a graveyard. There's that hole conversation with Greg about how the timelimit exists so people don't kill themselves to permanently leave the world behind and "live" in San Junipero forever. And I'd expect of all people HN people (computer people) would understand that uploading into a simulated reality is not the same as you entering that reality. Remember, once "you" are data, you can be copied. Then who is the real you. If you can be uploaded without being killed in the process then certainly that entity is not "you," but rather a different entity who has all your memories and is not able to distinguish itself from you. But you are still experiencing your experiences and not their experiences, so you are different entities. It is just an AI double. The promise of an afterlife is no different than the promises of old. A story to help you move on, to help you find comfort in the end. But this story is just more tangible for those who are left. San Junipero is not much different from many of the other stories who approach this topic. Even the happier Upload is quite dystopian between the lines of being a rom-com. It is that happiness that is the dystopia itself, the lure of false promises. The poisoned desert so sweet and tempting it is impossible to not take a bite.

pksebben 3y ago

Okay, yeah. But even from a pretty hardcore moral relativist POV... > "mercenary spyware", AI war targeting, and death drones Are not super easy to justify. Like, sure some people obviously think those ought to be a thing, but those people are dicks.

nojs 3y ago

> San Junipero, the one positive Black Mirror episode with an actual Happily Ever After romantic ending You forgot Hang the DJ :)

kibwen 3y ago

> Some people think San Junipero, the one positive Black Mirror episode with an actual Happily Ever After romantic ending is a dystopian vision. IIRC, after the couple prances away hand-in-hand into the sunset, the camera pulls back through the fourth wall to reveal the darkened server room in which their minds are being emulated, blinkenlights glittering in the darkness among the monotone drone of case fans, zooming out to reveal an endless row of servers receding into the distant blackness in a scene reminiscent of The Matrix. If the showrunners intended it to be unambiguously happy, I feel like they would have omitted that part... Or maybe I'm hallucinating, because I found the implications utterly horrifying, much to my partner's consternation.

tialaramex 3y ago
> If the showrunners intended it to be unambiguously happy, I feel like they would have omitted that part... I think this has the same direct purpose as my favourite modern Doctor Who scene but with different larger strategy. To tell the audience something explicitly, because it's not necessarily obvious and otherwise not everybody will have guessed. Often the Doctor understands what's going on and the audience are learning as they go, but in "The Girl In The Fireplace" the Doctor never actually knows why this spaceship chose this girl, in this time. The audience does at the end though, because we pull out to show the spaceship's name. Both the women know exactly what we're shown at the end of San Junipero. That "Heaven is a place on Earth" in a very literal sense, but while it's explained somewhat, the details aren't mentioned because they'd be clunky as exposition - hence the explicit visualization of the data centre where they're running. You aren't alone in finding this horrifying, but for Charlie Brooker, myself and a large number of people this is the best case scenario - and since Charlie wrote the show...
godelski 3y ago
Not to mention that Black Mirror's entire agenda is near-Sci-Fi horror. The episode is specifically about getting trapped in nostalgia, a non-existent past. Yes, love is found in this pursuit, but so it death. All the music in the show is about living in a box and forgetting about the real world. Other characters talk about forgetting they're in the simulation and they talk about how they live in a graveyard. There's that hole conversation with Greg about how the timelimit exists so people don't kill themselves to permanently leave the world behind and "live" in San Junipero forever. And I'd expect of all people HN people (computer people) would understand that uploading into a simulated reality is not the same as you entering that reality. Remember, once "you" are data, you can be copied. Then who is the real you. If you can be uploaded without being killed in the process then certainly that entity is not "you," but rather a different entity who has all your memories and is not able to distinguish itself from you. But you are still experiencing your experiences and not their experiences, so you are different entities. It is just an AI double. The promise of an afterlife is no different than the promises of old. A story to help you move on, to help you find comfort in the end. But this story is just more tangible for those who are left. San Junipero is not much different from many of the other stories who approach this topic. Even the happier Upload is quite dystopian between the lines of being a rom-com. It is that happiness that is the dystopia itself, the lure of false promises. The poisoned desert so sweet and tempting it is impossible to not take a bite.