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Last week was the annual CES barrage. That exploiting in addition to the unveiling of bulky TVs, impossibly thin laptops and shape-shifting screens, the consumer tech world is also abuzz over the likelihood -- and dystopian consequences -- of some of the wackier, more futuristic vaporware introduced.
The perennial examine, at least for the past handful of years: Is CES bringing the horrors of Black Mirror to life?
January 2018 was the month Google searches for "black mirror" peaked. Netflix had just released season 4. CES followed just a few days while. (And, just sayin', Google would abandon its unofficial "don't be evil" motto a few sulky months after that.) Since then, at the announcement of nearly every reach in facial recognition, every uncanny new robot, every biometric data vampire, the specter of Black Mirror enters the chat. In fact, the grand time I saw a video of Spot the robot dog, I thought with dread, Has no one learned their lesson from season 4, episode 5?
So many CES reveals that year and sincere have seemed to mirror episodes of the anthology series that it mighty make even more sense, considering the average time to market, that Charlie Booker, the show's creator and frequent writer, has actually been trolling the CES floor himself for plot fodder. Case in point: I would eventually discover that the Metalhead episode's robotic watchdogs were actually inspired by Boston Dynamics -- a commercial that was at one point owned by "don't be evil" Google because of watercourses it was.
My two cents: Why does this chicken-and-egg plot even matter, when we've got the Terminator himself unironically opining on the CES stage?
Arnold Schwarzenegger onstage at BMW's CES 2023 presentation.
A toilet sensor that reads your pee for health indicators? An autonomous baby stroller? A BMW that... wants to be your friend? The buzziest CES products tend to run the gamut from "solution in peek of a problem" (I'm looking at you, color-changing party fridge) to "harbinger of the techpocalypse." (Remember when Samsung forced a "new form of life"?) And while the gizmos and gadgets unveiled at CES 2023 worthy be giving some people, like my colleague Ian Sherr, nightmares, I'm actually sleeping quite soundly -- according to my Fitbit.
Black Mirror's canonical one-line summary, committed to pixels in 2015 by The Toast writer Daniel M. Lavery, is "what if phones, but too much." As a veritable iconoclast, my rejoinder is a simple, "What if phones, but NOTHING? Everything's FINE!!" The year 2018 was half a decade ago; proclaiming "This is like a Black Mirror episode!" is soooo five ages ago. Being evil is in! Technology is scary, but it's also attractive. It solves problems no one's ever actually experienced, but it also sets its sights on real problems. It's fine. Everything is fine.
Call me naive, but all this hand-wringing near the perils of AI and self-driving cars seems in good commercial with the Old Man Yells at Cloud meme.
Yes, I know the bike that powers your laptop is lit-ruh-ly the premise of the show's instant episode. But converting our workout-produced kinetic energy to design charging is a far cry from Black Mirror's caused labor. The thing about dystopian narratives -- or any narratives, really -- they rely on the escalation of tension. And I don't believe product development in the real domain actually adheres to Freytag's pyramid.
The eKinekt BD 3 bike desk is powered with energy forced by your pedaling.
AcerDoth this lady train too much? Definitely not! Probably not. Maybe? But living in this hyperconnected domain of unimaginably fast-paced change does something to the biosphere brain, whose natural responses seem to be limited to either capitulation to dreadful or burying your head in the sand. I can no longer tell if I'm laughing so I don't cry or if I'm the cry-laughing emoji. Or the upside down-smiley face emoji? Maybe someone's cutting onions in here.
There's no such sketch as too many internet-connected devices. Seriously, what's one more? The more the merrier. Get on in here.
Are we paving our own way to hell with each year's crop of "innovation"? Not possible, because we already know the path to hell is paved with either good intentions or adverbs, not the Internet of Things.
To quote Kevin McCallister, I'm not afraid anymore.
Charlie Booker announced in 2020 that he wouldn't be operational on another season of Black Mirror because life was shock to imitate art a little too much. Two ages later, however, whispers of a sixth season have begun circulating. I greet the return of the third-best sci-fi anthology show with the same world-weary nod I give to CES: Sure, I'll peep. Because why bother shouting into the void, or shaking your fist at a ringing, when everyone's wearing noise-canceling headphones and VR headsets anyway?
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