The Design Fiction of Black Mirror

Did you see Black Mirror on Channel 4 recently? It's a bleak and paranoid set of 3 parables of a future with unintended consquences. Created by Charlie Brooker, all three are available to watch now on 4OD.

 

Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.

 Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

 

The first two episodes, written by Brooker, feature plenty of his favoured themes - degredation, the public's obsession with celebrity and the elite, exploitation, the media, herd mentality, immorality - a high-profile political figure is forced to have sex with a pig, a TV talent shows run by porn barons, that kind of thing. 

The first episode wasn't set in the future, but felt like a more deviant and sneering version of the present. A society more akin to YouTube comments. The second episode used a more dramatic but  contrived futurism that felt more like living in a Nintendo Wii game. @AlxButterworth pointed out it's use of an idea from new media artist Jeffrey Shaw c. 2000. This more familiar  nature of this futurism was certainly intentional - it's satirical and exaggerated. The first was set today, the second was a kind of future imagined by Nintendo Wii, but the third was a futurism more sophisticated, more Apple-esque or Rams. Some kind of Swiss school of horror.
 
 
I don't mean this to distract from the quality of these first two episodes, they were brilliant and entertaining. But it's specifically the third episode that I found really interesting as a piece of design fiction. This is a great example of what design fiction can do for us - the prototyping of the future to make sure were don't fuck it up for ourselves. You could argue that all science fiction does this, but with this episode it feels so possible, so familiar and desirable that it makes it all the more chilling.
 
SPOILER ALERT: Make sure you've seen it first before you read the rest of this and from here on I'll assume you've seen it.
 
The third episode was leagues ahead of the first two, don't you think? The style of futurism was retro (the cars, the houses) but the bionic devices and their interfaces were more stylish, simplistic and felt like the kind of things you would really expect of the future. They were subtractive.
 
 
They even had classic cars (the maroon one is a Ford Zephyr, apparently). Perhaps the 3D printers of the future can knock out a shiny new VW Karmann Ghias as easily as today's 3D printers churn out blobby grey trinkets. The presence of classic cars felt like a nod to our present obsession with polaroid filters a la Instagram and Hipstamatic, a kind of borrowed sentimentalism.
 
 
You can see how such an invention as Willow Grain could come about - an implant that allows you to play back any memory you've ever experienced, not just see but taste, smell and feel. Yes please, I'll have some of that. 
 
 
And their ability to see information augmented with their vision feels very much like the bionic contact lenses that we hear about on a regular basis.
 
While it was on, many people on Twitter pointed out the similarity to Facebook's Timeline.
 
This final episode wasn't written by Brooker but was penned by Jesse Armstrong, who is known for Peep Show and The Thick of It.
 
It almost feels like a public service. Brooker and Armstrong are saying "hang on chaps, let's not rush into all this. I know it looks fun but we're going to think up some really horrid scenarios that might make  you think twice."

5 comments

Author: Charlotte Hillenbrand Charlotte Hillenbrand

I agree that the third film gave most pause for thought. The first was just within the bounds of credibility (your description of it as life seen through Youtube comments is spot on), whilst the second felt almost close enough to X-Factor to be a documentary (X-Factor Late?).

What was kind of brilliant about the Willow Grain film was how keeping a record of everything may lead us to believe we’ve got the ‘truth’ right there to play back again and again whilst in reality, we create our own truth after the fact and that’s the one we live with. Mess with that at your peril.

It’s kind of surprising no-one mentioned other lifestreaming services (Path, anyone?), but I guess the combination of 800 million users + oversharing + inattention to privacy settings = intoxicating mass fear for the future. One of the many reasons I lie about my age and other things on Facebook.

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Author: Tony Golan-Vilella Tony Golan-Vilella

First time commenter, really enjoy the blog!

That being said, really all I felt from watching the third film was that “Liam” was a complete bellend.

The technology and design concepts are elegantly depicted, so maybe I’m being a fool for seeing the troubles this film showcases as solely due to people who are given ample opportunities to express at least a kindergarten level of emotional maturity and choose to fail.

That being said, that airport scene gave me the extreme heebie-jeebies. Oh civil rights :S

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Author: willsh

Just watched it on catchup. Or redo, indeed.

Immensely powerful, and yes, the best of the three.

It used to be history was written by the victors. Here though, nobody is a winner.

Great write up, btw.

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Author: GemStGem

Absolutely loved this installment of Black Mirror; a chilling commentary on thinking twice before you post something online.

One of my favourite parts of the film were when the girl at the dinner party said she didn’t have a grain fitted and everyone reacted with eyebrows raised in disbelief and cries of “No way!”. Eerily similar to the way people react when they find out that one of their friends doesn’t use Facebook.

A clever and well-timed piece of TV.

I really liked your post on the Design Fiction talk from SXSWi, too; something I’m going to look into in more depth.

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Author: gradiate

Great write up which I agree with completely. I think the use of old cars was clever in such it got round having to film future vehicles whilst playing on the internet’s obsession with one off’s and nostalgia.

In a world where we can all buy the same clothes, books and food it’s only old things no longer made which truly stand out.

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2 Responses

Smithery 2012 Projects - Making Things | smithery

[...] e of Black Mirror is a great example.  <a href="http://madebymany.com/blog/the-design-fiction-of-black-mirror" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://madebymany.com']);">Mike&#8217;s written a great post</a> on the design fiction of that. [...]

Smithery 2012 Projects - Making Things | smithery

[...] e of Black Mirror is a great example.  <a href="http://madebymany.com/blog/the-design-fiction-of-black-mirror" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://madebymany.com']);">Mike&#8217;s written a great post</a> on the design fiction of that. [...]