Digitalizing the Consciousness: “Black Mirror’s San Junipero”
I recently watched an episode of the Netflix Original Sci Fi Series: Black Mirror, called “San Junipero” and boy, was it something…
Despite the nostalgic atmosphere -well, whatever I can remember from my childhood- the synthwave and those retro rock songs, for once more BM doesn’t seize to amaze me…
Warning folks! Some spoilers coming up…
In this episode we follow Kelly and Yorkie, two young women who meet in the town of San Junipero each Saturday night and develop a romance in its delights, during the 80’s. Later in the episode it is revealed -as in every BM episode- that things are not exactly what they seem. San Junipero turns out to be a virtual reality world where users can live in this particular town through different eras and periods. Even more, when the users pass away in “reality”, they can upload themselves, or their consciousness into the San Junipero Cloud and “live forever in a heaven-like state”, inside that social network. (some quick escalation here)
Black Mirror tells us in general, that technology entraps humanity and society, presenting almost always a dystopian use of modern age inventions and raising controversial questions about our way of thinking and behavior. But here, it doesn’t seem that bad at all... In fact it is rather amazing.
However, this concept of escaping our physical selves and digitalizing our minds in the purpose of leaving our bodily needs and weaknesses or limits, is a common concept of the Sci Fi world without so much of that positive after-feel.
Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, tells us a story triggered by an alien race that assisted humanity in its early beginnings through a mysterious machine, the Monolith, and helped us to reach out for the stars. In the original novel written by Arthur C. Clarke, those species are said to be the first civilization to obtain interstellar travel and the technology to transfer their minds into a digital environment, thus, overcoming their physical limits and become “omnipotent”. Implying that this is the ultimate achievement or “destiny” of every species that are to survive in the cosmos.
In Wally Pfister’s and Jack Paglen’s “Transcendence”, Dr. Will Caster, a world known AI researcher, achieves the goal of technological singularity, when his wife, Dr. Evelyn Caster, uploads his mind to an AI supercomputer to save him from his dying body. Resulting him using his new and enhanced cerebral capabilities in order to achieve various scientific breakthroughs, and the creation of a human hive mind. Again, the idea of unlocking our full potential is based on the riddance of our bodies and the limitations of our current state through the digital “uploading” of our mind.
These are fictional stories of an advanced and distant future. Well what if we are already making the first steps towards there?
The following video presents the concept of Brain Recording, a neural networks study of using computer learning methods to decode brain patterns and produce digital images.
Obviously this is far from a total digitalization of someones’ memories and personality, but perhaps, it’s a start…(I hope)
My thinking here, is more of a series of questions on the implications this could have in our society; the ethical dilemmas or the scientific advancement and overall benefits... Could that concept of “uploading the consciousness” be truly the evolution of the human mind ?
Well that is something else and surely, I’m not the right guy not only to answer but even ask the question.
(Besides, my opinion on the matter is filtered by my excitement and enthusiasm)
These are my thoughts on the series’ concept after all.
So, returning to the Black Mirror episode, it was the first time we’ve watched an ending that seemed utopic and left with a happy feeling
(or it was just Belinda Carlisle singing).
But could it be that this was a prison for the human mind after all? The illusion of an after life? Could it be that Black Mirror gave us a harsh realistic message hidden behind a comforting happy end?
Surely, all these are rather ambiguous and depend on the viewer’s perspective.
One thing I can say for certain though… it was a hell of an episode.
