This week we had to watch an episode of black mirror called “Be right back”. The episode started with a casual couple who’s names are Martha and Ash just hanging out a living good. Then Ash has to go out to work and when he’s out he gets killed in a car accident. Marsha Is home wondering where he is and cries to her sister, then eventually the police tell her that her husband has died in a car accident and she’s absolutely devastated.The wake was a couple weeks later and her friend at the wake told her about a way to deal with the pain of losing him and a way to move on. It’s an app on the phone the allows you to talk to an AI version of the person you lost and the AI will respond the same way that the person who dies would. Martha is also pregnant and finds this out shortly after he death of Ash. So Martha eventually uses this app and gets attached to it. she upgraded the app so that she can talk to he AI on the phone now and she was quite fond of using It and becomes extremely attached to the app. The episode starts to really speed up the intensity when Martha finds out that there is an upgrade where you can get an actual replica of th person that died with this very unique technology and she foolishly upgrades and gets “Ash” back. At first I thought it was actually very interesting and cool the way the technology can quite actually look like, sound like, and somewhat behave like the dead Ash, but as the episode went on it got really weird.As the episode went on, Martha slowly started to lose faith in the technology when she began noticing the little differences that the AI technology had with the real Ash and everything was downhill from there. They got in a huge fight at this hill and she told him to jump off it and you could see the conflict that she had with wanting him in her life and just moving on.So does she keep the AI? YES!!!! She stores him in the attic and years later her daughter and herself visit it.

Personally I would never use this technology if we had it in the world today. It can literally only lead to bad things. I can understand if you are a spiritual person and do the boards and stuff like that where you can speak to the dead, but this is just way too far.I think it will do more damage to you rather than help you get over your loss.

I feel like the black mirror episodes could be telling us what we could be In store for in our society and technology, and i’m terrified. I think the technology aspect is that it won’t stop getting better and more interesting as far as what you can do, but I feel like some of these thing should never be invented.

Do you think that there will be something invented from these shows?

Weekly news: https://theweek.com/10things/938240/10-things-need-know-today-september-18-2020

This week we all had to watch another black mirror episode called “15,000,000 Merits”. I have to admit the part of the episode was super boring but it gradually picked up the intensity as we went on throughout the episode and it became more and more engaging and fun to watch. This one is about a society that is trapped in some sort of area where they basically have to ride a bike all day to earn points so that they can do the simplest things in life like eat, drink, go to the bathroom, or even brush there teeth. Everything they do costs points, and it takes a ton of time to collect a lot. The main character in this episode is Bing Madsen and his brother just recently died, leaving Bing with a total of fifteen million points. Then he meets a girl named Abi and Bing thinks she has an amazing voice and should go on the show called Hot Shot. This is a show where your skills are judged and if they like you then you basically made it and are famous but if they don’t then you go back to basically living a pretty bad life on your bike. She wants to but its fifteen million merits to go on the show and eventually Bing convinces her to do it by saying that the only real thing that he’s ever seen the past couple of years is Abis voice. This is where the intensity of the episode was picking up. After she sang the judges were more interested in her body rather than her voice. They want her to go on this sexual TV show or program that plays for the bikers throughout the day. She actually ends up accepting the fame of doing these gross acts instead of going back to biking and wasting the points.

This causes Bing to rage and work his way back to fifteen million to get on the show. When he gets on the show he threatens to kill himself if the judges don’t listen to what he has to say. He basically exposes the entire system for wha it really is and its all factual. so the judges tell him that the truth is in short supply and they want him to do a tv show twice a week. This is where I was kind of confused. I didn’t by any chance want him to kill himself or anything, but I’m not sure why he said yes that he will do it. At the end it shows the picture above where he found peace.

If I can take one thing away from this episode its that social media in general has taken a grip of individuals in our generation. Everyones so obsessed with getting likes and followers and being the next big thing. I don’t have a problem with getting to the top but I have a problem with how you do it. Do it the right way. Don’t drag others down that helped you get to where you are today. We can do better.

What has been your favorite episode so far?

Weekly news about the election: https://news.ballotpedia.org/2020/09/11/weekly-presidential-news-briefing-september-11-2020/

This week we had to watch another Black Mirror episode called “The Entire History of You”. This jam packed episode is about a chip that is placed inside your neck that allows you to access your past memories and play them for yourself or for others. With this chip you are also able to zoom in and turn on a lip reading option which I personally thought was very cool. Throughout the episode Liam has to go through a very painful process of investigating the history of his wife and an ignorant character named Jonas. Personally while watching this I really felt sorry for Liam. My family has had to go through the type of behavior that he dealt with in this episode and its one of the hardest things you can possibly have to deal with and get through in your life. It changes you and you can really see how Liam changes throughout the episode as well. At one point in the episode he even says “this isn’t me”.

I feel like if we had this technology in our society today, a lot of people would think twice about the things they do and the decisions they make. I also feel like a lot of the bad decisions that people make wouldn’t even happen because of this technology kind of like keeping us in check, even though I’m pretty sure there is a way to delete memories.The chip would definitely lead to us making more honest and truthful decisions as well. Although I really like the thought of the chip and its a good idea, it would be terrible in our society today. I feel like it would really only benefit the justice system which is a great thing and also crime would be reduced because of this. But it would negatively impact the trust in relationships and ultimately lead to a ton of conflict, but that’s just my personal opinion.

I did in fact attempt not to use my phone as much the last couple of days. Lets just say I didn’t do so well. I think it was at about the hour mark without using it that I was getting anxiety, like who’s texting me and I really wanted to scroll through my own social media. But then I remembered from the zoom meeting we asked about setting a reminder on a phone to just take a deep breath, so I did this and it actually really helps!!! It really relieves yourself of anxiety. I also remembered us talking about appreciating nature and we only have so much time on this beautiful planet and Im not gonna waste so much time on my phone.You only get one life and you shouldn’t spend six hours of it a day on your phone scrolling through social media. So I took a breath and went for a run and then got some food with my brothers after. And in total I went without my phone for about 4 hours or so. Its a good start but I think I can do better. I think we all can do better and enjoy/embrace the world without our phones for a while.

How long can you go without your phone?

Weekly news article: https://theweek.com/good-news/935591/weeks-good-news-september-3-2020

Hi, My name is Dominic Chiarmonte. I am a business major from Buffalo. This semester I will be taking all online courses so this semester will be interesting. I will be back though for the spring semester and can’t wait to be back in Alfred!!!