I definitely want to start this weeks post with the Black Mirror episode White Christmas. This is one of my favorite episodes because nothing turns out how you’d expect it to. It’s so technologically advanced, yet the situations feel so today. It makes it easy to see a future in which these situations occur, as they already do in our own versions of technology.

This episode brings up the issue of blocking someone; this is something we all have experience with. Whether it’s actually hitting that block button or ghosting someone it has become the easier way to fixing, or rather ignoring, your social problems. In the episode, 2 different relationships are more difficult by using the block feature that can be done in real life through eye implants. The obsession that Joe has with Bethany and what he thinks is his child is the issue with resolving problems in this way. Joe spends YEARS of his life trying to connect with his child in the only way that he can, only to find out eventually that it was never his child. If Bethany would have been straightforward, she could have saved Joe and her father several issues. I think this is a valuable lesson for our generation as we do the same thing to people with our new culture of “ghosting”. Problems like these, especially when you’re in a relationship with someone, need to be faced honestly and head on. If there are other issues at rise such as domestic violence or you have already addressed the issue and the other person still responds obsessively, blocking can be a useful and almost necessary tool. However, the way that we are handling basic issues definitely shows the social barriers that our generation is putting up.

This week, we also watched a Ted Talk that gives us a little bit of insight on both the outcomes of technological advancement and its relation to evolution. This definitely relates to the ideas behind our beloved Black Mirror episodes. Susan Blackmore states that there are only 2 outcomes to these advancements: we become one with technology or it eventually surpasses us evolutionarily speaking. I think Black Mirror definitely gives us a look into the first option. Many of the episodes, including the one we watched this week feature humans with technological implants and other extreme advancements built into our homes and daily lives. However, in almost all of the episodes, the ending is one of a dark nature. This indicates that although we may try to become one with these advancements, there’s a good chance that we will fail as we are not as black and white as technology has the ability to be.

Blackmore also talks about how language is part of our evolution and our spread of “memes”. She explains the word “meme” as an imitation, which broadens the definition a I would have thought about it before watching it. Her bit about language definitely connects with the article this week titled “Emojis Don’t Mean What They Used To“. As Blackmore would explain it, emojis are becoming a meme of our everyday already complex language. If we think about it, they seem to be going backwards a step to simplify language; older civilizations are of course known for using pictographs, cave drawings, hieroglyphics, etc. This is similar to the emoji language that is taking storm and sometimes replacing language through text messaging altogether. As stated in Ian Bogost’s article, emojis are becoming more specific rather than a form of abstraction. I think that this will be an interesting concept to try to explain as it becomes its own form of language that people who speak any language can understand.

As daunting as it may seem, here’s my question for you all: Which form of Blackmore’s future prediction do you think is most likely? Do you think there are any other options?

The Weekly News

https://weather.com/news/news/2020-11-12-tropical-storm-eta-impacts-florida-flooding

This weeks news informs us about the tropical storm and the flooding that occurred as a result. I think this is a good news story to inform you guys about as the pandemic and the election still take over 90% of news posts.