As time goes by everyone seems to lose someone close to them and it’s hard. I feel that we all go through that process hoping to meet closure, but as we all know it takes time. Losing a loved one is never easy, it’s painful and it makes you wish you had the power to go back in time and change everything. Now don’t judge me, but what if you had a chance to bring back one of your loved ones, would you do it? Most people in the early stages would probably take that chance even if it was a small one. When you have a void in your life you want to fill it anyway you can and by doing whatever means necessary.

This week in class we watched this episode on Black Mirror that brings up this same idea of bringing a loved one back. It starts off with this couple, Martha and Ash who had just moved into a new cottage. Unfortunently Ash dies the next day returning the moving van, this sends Martha into a state of grief naturally. This makes her decide to get rid of everything that reminds her of ash and just redoing everything in her image till theres nothing left of his memory. Even then it’s not enough for her she still feels him and remembers every little memory of their lives together. Now her friend tells her about this unnamed system that can scan the internet for the digital impressions of Ash, giving Martha a chance to make closure. Instead of closure this system only ends up making it harder for to move on, making her go a step further by buying a replica of Ash in the flesh. Martha ends up hating this, because it didn’t end up replacing the real Ash, but instead made this version of him that she hated. Ultimately making her more confused on how to move on than in the beginning.

There was this question in class the other day about how do we know what is real? Like seriously think about that question like how do we distinguish between what is real and whats not real. In the episode Martha wants this to be real she wants this new replacement of Ash to be like the old one, but it just isn’t and she knows that. What I couldn’t understand is why did she end up keeping him locked up in the attic. Why not get rid of it, was it because she couldn’t bear to lose him again or does it again come back to not being able to move on?We listened to a podcast in class this week that talked about this guy who tried this interactive app that he could just talk to. It wasn’t a real person talking to him, but instead a computer version of himself. He ended up enjoying it actually saying that it was almost comforting having something like that to talk to. I was pretty interested to say the least, imagine having something to talk to that thinks like you. My friends are great, but I feel that because the system knows you and how you think it would be able to help you more if you’re in a predicament. This system that this guy went through is essentially the same thing as the system in the Black mirror episode just not as developed yet. Although in this situation it was nice to talk a computer system, the question still arises about if this technology can actually help with closure?

This article I found talks about a series of new revelations about the federal government’s coronavirus response and how it could reinforce concerns about whether the Trump administration’s political motives were a higher priority than the health of Americans during this Coronavirus outbreak.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/18/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-usps-cdc-hhs/index.html