Technology

The very episode that's shown in the thumbnail had a happy ending where the crew used his own tech against him

Hang the DJ also had a pretty positive ending too.

The term op-ed is literally short for "opposite the editorial page", and the idea is that it is an opportunity for opposing viewpoints to be brought into the discussion for consideration. The fact that the author is a moron does not besmirch the quality of the Guardian writ large.

That's very much what the Opinion section in the Guardian is all about: an all comers free-for-all written by anyone who cares to submit a piece. Generally unrelated their news journalism and general mission/ideology.

I see why they do it: opposing views and so on. But in the current society of headlines are everything, knee jerk reactions, polarisation and the idea of a middle ground being treason, etc, we get "Why are the Guardian saying x?!" 🤷‍♂️

It doesn't "show the future", though. This is exactly what frustrates me so much about online discourse and shows like Black Mirror, some new technology comes along and people go "that's a terrible idea, haven't you seen Black Mirror?" As if Black Mirror was some kind of rigorous scientific study that shows the One True Way that the future will unfold.

It's an entertainment show. Its purpose is to draw in viewers and keep them watching. You don't do that with episodes that show a new technology coming out and everything turning out fine, you do it by presenting a scary, compelling narrative.

We don't get freaked out in real life by summer camps and restrict the availability of machetes and other bladed instruments near them because of what happened in that documentary series "Friday the 13th." It's fiction. Plot trumps realism.

Yes and no, because I think a thing fiction can’t do is repeat itself, so they must find interesting new angles in which they could reflect possible futures. The very much most likely future of whatever the thing is becoming an ad-laden, buggy, infinite-money ponzi scheme until it’s abandoned 3-72 months after its release and thrown into a landfill isn’t that interesting to see episode after episode.

It's a shame the nu-Trek is utter mass appeal apolitical dogshit that has nothing to say about anything except that Alex Kurtzman should not be let anywhere near a production of anything other than a Big Mac.

EDIT: By the way, if anybody is looking for something with the same sort of tight drama, clever storytelling and progressive politics (but not virtue signaling for its own sake) and confronting complicated issues and good people doing what's right overcoming them, but would also like it to be a bit more human, down to earth and character centric then trek veteran writer of TNG and DS9 - Ronald D. Moore and I - his biggest fan girl this side of the internet - would like to invite you to watch For All Mankind.

It is an alternate history show where the soviets "win" the race to the moon and the space race continues and every season is set in a new decade, or at least that is the tagline because underneath the goofy premise and out of context clips of the sea dragon or nuclear space planes or AK-47s wielded by cosmonauts on the moon, what you'll find is a tightly written complex drama about an ensemble cast of characters and their changing relationships to themselves, each other and the tumultous world around them.

The show covers everything from the consequences of operation paperclip, misoginy, red scare and cold war distrust to civil rights, feminism, yuppie culture, privatisation of space, startup culture, homophobia, labour unions, psychedelics, PTSD, opioids, threat of nuclear war, militarization and so, so much more.

I really can't say enough good things about it. Oh yeah - the licensed song choice is great. Petula Clark's The World Song, M83, Smashing Pumpkins, John Lennon screaming his lungs out in 'Well Well Well'? And that earworm song from actual IRL North Korea which is the first and only song I've ever heard of theirs? If only they didn't use 'Come as You Are' but oh well nothing's perfect.

The first season is a bit rough in places at the start as the show finds it's footing and the stupid generically modern intro animation and music really sucks but S2 is an actual masterpiece of TV.

That’s a relatively new phenomenon. All tech media was positive and the stuff of dreams until around the 2010s. Because we were seeing a steady and noticeable shift in the power dynamics. We were being pulled deeper under a capitalist nightmare instead of flying in a techno futuristic dreamscape. We couldn’t see anything but the piling negative aspects of our technology: it’s killing us, it’s enslaving us, its being used to spy on us, we’re being told it’s a wonder but we keep finding out it’s a horror. This isn’t on us for not being enlightened enough to see asimov’s words. We’re too aware of the active manipulation and torture. They made us the product, and they made the things we bought spy machines and tools of manipulation and deception.

We need to create better, freer tech, free from the oligarchs currently wringing us all dry while they build their multimillion dollar doomsday bunkers with the money they’re stealing from us if we are going to build the better world in which the better half of humanity succeeds. Art imitates life. And currently they’re outsourcing art to the oligarchs machines that are 10000x worse for the planet and the power dynamics.

Yeah similar to what Vince Gilligan said, we need to make more stories about good people, because the media illiterate just start glamorizing the bad characters and completely miss the point

Hard to imagine when reality keeps showing otherwise.

Yes, I loved classic Trek for showing a better a future, where humans have moved beyond our greed, prejudice, and self-destructive tendencies. That was the through line in TOS and TNG, even if it wasn't always 100% on-point and didn't always age well (you need to view TOS in its historical context to get past the baked-in 1960s sexism, for example).

There's a place for cautionary tales, and there's a place for aspirational tales.

I liked Discovery well enough for what it was, but I hated its picture of a future where good humans are the exception rather than the rule.

Nowadays, I think solarpunk is where its at.

I would like to hear the author’s take on pornography porn.

I don't think he's proposing changing Black Mirror itself, he's saying the same thing you're saying - that it's just not a good show.

Like, if I was writing an article criticizing the prevalence of torture porn in modern entertainment, I wouldn't say "they should release a Saw movie where Jigsaw forces his victims to undergo nonviolent counselling." That wouldn't be a Saw movie, it'd be a weird parody of one. I'd just say "Saw is an example of the sort of thing I'm complaining about."

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.