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.
Had me until the vr point. Vr has so many great uses from manufacturing and engineering to teaching and practicing medicine in a way that gives you a 3D presentation of schematics or human bodies.
Commercially vr is doing ok, but many of the issues have come from Meta bottlenecking the vr world by buying up all the big studios then having them make cheap mobile phone game-level experiences instead of really expanding the scope of things.