What You See is What You Get
You’ve heard the expression, “what you see is what you get” I’m sure. Usually when people say this they are referring to the fact that they are upfront and honest. Now, imagine it in the context of being able to have a physical copy of everything you see. Sounds cool right? Let me answer that with another cliché; “be careful what you wish for”.
The Netflix series, Black Mirror provides a new controversial subject from episode to episode, and makes viewers think about our society and our society’s future.
One of the episodes that stood out to me personally was in Season 1, Episode 3, “The Entire History of You”. Essentially, you are following the story-line of a married couple, where the husband (Liam) suspects his wife (Ffion) has been cheating on him after he walks into a mutual friend’s party and sees her being rather flirtatious with another man, Jonas. Additionally, everyone in this society has decided to implant a memory storage device behind their ear which stores every memory they have had since it’s implantation into a memory reel. This newfound obsession with the possibility of being cheated on drives Liam into a psychotic downward spiral of replaying every single memory he can remember of arguments he has had with Ffion , and the night he saw her and Jonah flirting together. He then demands that she show him her memory reel to eventually reveal that he had been right from the beginning and that she did in fact cheat on him. During his pursuit he managed to get drunk and verbally abuse her, while emotionally distraught over the news, and in the end it seems that their marriage is over, and he removes the chip from his neck to free himself from his own memories.
Now, you may be thinking how insane it is that you would be able to watch every moment of your life back. However, we are actually not far off from this reality and haven’t been that far away for quite some time. An article on Brit & Co from 2012, talked about a new set of glasses designed by Vergence Labs which would hold a small spy-like camera to record every interaction when wearing them, as well as what was at the time, Google’s up and coming new product — Project Glass.
We know that Google Glass still has many bugs to work out and it is likely that they will have a storage component, but it is interesting that we think of this as a relatively new technology when the idea has been in the works for years.
Today, in 2017, we see that this may be coming to fruition on a whole new level. Sony has just received a patent for a “smart” contact lens which will use piezoelectric sensors to detect when to start recording the surroundings. The lens will be recording this information to an internal storage device, and this will all be in your eyeball…
What I think the Black Mirror episode is trying to warm us of is the obsessive compulsion that can happen with this new technology and that while it seems like having our every memory recorded would be amazing, it can actually hinder the human experience. That, with this technology people will not communicate as well, trust less, and devalue memories. We will stop thinking of our moments as precious if we can watch every second back whenever we wish.
What ever happened to occasionally capturing the good times on an old school video cam? What happened to living for the moment, not for the replay?
If our society is going to adopt this technology there could be some advantageous positives. This contact lens could help solve murders, aid students when they forget what the prof said would be on the exam, etc. However, how do we draw a line between use and obsession?
If we are going to track our every second, as a collective society and individually we will have to know when to take a break. We cannot lend ourselves to infatuation with every detail and will need to “take out the chip” sometimes. This is much easier said than done, however, it will be a necessity if we are to live in a world where we can scrutinize every move we make over and over again.
The human brain will hold memories, but without the ability to fully play them back we end up blocking out some details and remembering more core facts than precise details a lot of the time. Even with this, we still have people who obsess over details of events to figure out what they could have changed, rather than accepting the past and moving forward (living for the moments as opposed to in them overthinking every action).
This compulsion had already contributed to people’s mental illnesses like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Depression, and so on. So, it is reasonable to think that with this new technology people who suffer from these illnesses will only dig themselves deeper into a black hole of self-depreciation.
Like I said, I truly believe the only way to stop this from happening would be to unplug and know when to unplug. Whether this means policies around the new technology about use, or an integrated power off at a certain time, something will have to happen to stop people from doing this to themselves.
Personally, while I think this would be useful technology for law enforcement especially in regards to solving crimes, proving accusations of rape for example, I fail to see a need for this in our personal lives. I could see myself investing in it, and playing back memories when I want to show a friend something funny I encountered or playback a really happy time, but like everyone not every memory I have is an amazing one and I don’t want to put myself in a position to dwell on those.
I think another reason people are so invested in this becoming a reality is because everyone is always looking for a way to beat mortality. Everyone wants to be immortal and this technology would be a way to record your entire life and store it; basically, you could live forever. But ask yourself, is that really the point? Should we aim to live forever or rather, should we aim to influence as many people on the planet we can in our lifetime? I think the latter would make for a much for fulfilled life. Why is everyone trying so hard to find a way to live forever? If you want to be remembered, make your life worth remembering.
Technology is an amazing thing, but so is the human brain. I would bet on my brain and my thoughts to make me happier than this technology at the end of the day.
You could call it the bliss of ignorance, but I think it’s more about choosing which memories are more important and which ones make you happy and then deciding to take your life for the positives and accept the negatives. It’s like German theologian Albert Schweitzer said, “happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory”.
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