Black Mirror Reflects A Possible Future

Imagine a world where you can only live in a neighborhood if you have the social ranking of a 4.5 or higher and the only way to achieve that rating is by other people evaluating what you post or how you interact with them. Maybe you give some cookies to everyone in the office and your score goes from a 3.9 to a 4.2 but then you cut someone off in traffic and see a notification on your phone telling you that you dropped to a 4.164. These are the troubles the episode “Nosedive” displays in the hit Netflix series “Black Mirror.”

“Black Mirror” is a British science fiction anthology. Although the show has been around since 2011, it is just now gaining widespread popularity in America after its release on Netflix. The series has fans all around the world questioning their trust in technology.

In the realm of “Black Mirror,” technology impacts the lives of people like never before. Mothers are able to monitor the exact location of their children at all times and even see what they see. Dating simulations predict a near perfect match for everyone. The scary thing is, we have already seen similar scenarios play out in our real lives. The hit show displays an interesting representation of what could possibly happen if technology advances even further.

Each episode in “Black Mirror” is told within the same universe – meaning that all the events in the show happen in the same area, just in a different timeline. An episode from the newer season starts with a young girl traveling who stumbles across a building called “Black Museum.” It is full of exhibits of a man named Rolo Haynes and all of the experiments he has participated in and failed, such as the digital cloning machine from the “USS Calister,” the bathtub from “Crocodile,” and even the drone bee from the very first episode “The National Anthem.” All of these exhibits are from previous episodes of the show.

“Black Mirror” is set up on Netflix reversed, from Season 4 to Season 1, but there is a chronological way that the designers, Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, had intended the show to be watched. The first episode “The National Anthem” is intended to be viewed first, but as the viewer progresses, the episode order breaks off out of chronological order from how Netflix has it organized.