“Black Mirror” is hands down the most relevant program of our time, if for no other reason than how often it can make you wonder if we’re all living in an episode of it. This prescient and mordantly funny science-fiction anthology is smart enough to be just barely ahead of its time. It doesn’t imagine interstellar civilizations or postapocalyptic scenarios. Instead, it depicts variations on a near future transformed by information technology — our world, just a little worse.
“Black Mirror,” created for British television by Charlie Brooker, is a product of the 21st century and its digital, virtual breakthroughs. It speaks to a culture of people who live virtual second lives on social platforms. So, it’s concerned not with body snatchers but with the internet hive mind; not nuclear winter but artificial intelligence; not the complications of time travel but the implications of being able to offload human consciousness onto devices. Its view of technology is not cold and robotic but deeply emotional, because — as with our smartphones — we’ve made the machines extensions of our bodies and souls.
Typical of the Netflix large-portions ethos, a few new episodes are too long, and feel diluted compared with the lapidary early seasons. Still, “Black Mirror” hasn’t lost its currency. Its title refers to the glass screens of computers, tablets and phones, but the machines are not the danger here: it’s the anonymous, antiseptic monstrousness they can empower. The brilliance of “Black Mirror” is that it’s not about how technology imperils our humanity. It’s about the all-too-human faces reflected in our own black mirrors, staring back at us.
Internet: <www.nytimes.com> (adapted)
Judge the following items based on the text presented above.
The lack of interstellar civilizations and postapocalyptic scenarios illustrate that the program is different from typical sci-fi tv shows.