🦺 Black Mirror

Welcome to the eighth edition of Safe For Work. This week we peak into the digital near future/present.

The security-camera in the elevator calculates from your rate of respiration that you are in a state of heightened emotion– but what emotion? Nervousness, most likely– also calculated by the way your hands are fidgeting with the hem of your jacket. Your favourite jacket. This is the one you always wear to dinner with your parents, or to Championship games, or on important dates– Valentines Day, birthdays, New Years Eve. You are fidgeting the way you fidget before interviews, or after difficult phone conversations that don’t quite end when they are hung up– phone conversations with a lot of text-messages afterwards and not much punctuation.

But the type of nervousness here, observed by the security-camera in the elevator, seems to have a smile associated with it– right across your face. For a short and very long fraction of a second, the system struggles, comparing and cross-comparing various models of intersecting behavior from other individuals and your own circumstances– and then it lands on a framework that fits quite well. 

The engagement-ring you bought last week for $2396.99 came in a box that was about the same size as the slight shape the lobby security-camera sees in your left pocket as you walk towards the doors out to the street. And the car you are meeting there, you’d just booked a few minutes ago to take you clear across the city to the apartment of the woman you’ve been “In A Relationship” with on Facebook for the past two-and-a-half years. What you’re going there to do, and what you’re so happily nervous about doing, is perfectly clear now. You’re in the car. You’re on the way. 

But what you have not, for some reason, considered, is that the average time couples wait between marriage proposals and actual weddings is eighteen months, which would put the most likely time for your wedding a full sixteen months before the projected start of the next major recession– and why have you not considered this? This is a ridiculous thing not to consider!

After all, weddings are one of the most reliable and lucrative generators of economic activity— venues, caterers, florists, photographers, the band, on and on and on— and given the relative financial comfort of both parties’ families, holding the wedding before the recession would obviously be depriving the country of a considerable boost during its later time of need!

Of course, you aren’t hated for this. You’re a person, and people do things. Sometimes those things aren’t the things that are best for everyone, and that’s okay. That’s what society is for, and the systems of society, to make it all even out; there’s an unexpected thickening of traffic between your apartment and your destination. It takes a full forty minutes longer than you’d expected to get there. And the whole way that you’re going, as you’re apologizing into your phone, “I’ve got no idea what’s causing it, it’s just a wall of cars, you know?”— and of course she’s reassuring you that it’s fine, because it is, your relationship is easily at the point where things like this are fine— as you’re apologizing, you sure do seem to be getting a lot of advertisements and articles about rising divorce rates, or how things are so much harder after marriage, or the dangers of settling down too early— haven’t you heard of the dangers?

By the time you reach your destination and you step out of the car, you’ve decided to keep that box in your pocket and those words away from your lips for a little while longer. What’s the rush? It can wait another year— that’s just one more year of certainty that you’ll have behind you when it finally is time, right? And what’s a little more time at work?-- save up a little more money for the wedding, right? Right. You’re going to have a great evening, anyways— what’s the loss? In fact, on the way up the elevator to your not-fiance’s apartment, the security-camera observes that your rate of breathing has decreased significantly, and you aren’t fidgeting anymore with the hem of your nice jacket.

You aren’t nervous, now. Don’t you feel so much better?

Across twenty-two years and twenty-seven episodes (so far), Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror has left a certain shiver down the modern spine. Fears upon fears, reflecting our age– that our phones might be watching us; that companies might be controlling our lives, every waking moment; that we might become so drowned in advertisements and sponsored content that we can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t; that we might become so obsessed with impressions and social capital, “clout”, that we might become nothing more than numbers, or figureheads of our own lives. 

But perhaps even more frightening is the idea that nothing will change at all– because perhaps we’re already there. Or perhaps we simply aren’t noticing the journey. Checking the box marked “Terms and Conditions” because that’s just what you do, the same as you hold the elevator for someone, the same as you wait at a stop-sign, the same as you take your girlfriend out to a nice dinner before proposing– or not. 

Every once in a while, it’s a good idea to blink. What are some of the ways that technology has entered your life without you even noticing? How do you feel about the influence of technology on today’s workplace?-- on B2B interactions?-- on coworker-to-coworker interactions?-- on Human Resources? Can such technology be properly human? Can it be humane? These questions are more important than ever– as is your voice in answering them. 

In March the theme is Power and Energy. See you next week as we explore the birth of the power grid. Stay safe.