I stayed up last night finishing the second episode of Netflix’s Black Mirror, which is described by wikipedia as a “speculative fiction”  TV series. I fell in love with the piece more and more as my growing sense of discomfort and disgust grew. Yet, though the show seems to deliver its satire through a scientific-fiction, futuristic premise, it echoes Crowley’s words with a twist: science fiction does not explore the future, but rather looks towards the past, and in this case looks directly at the present.

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In my essay I want to examine this multimodal piece directly because, as indicated by its title “Fifteen Million Merits”, it examines the superficiality and non-ending cycle of consumerism of our present world. The future can never be examined without a lens of either the past or the present; and in the case of science fiction, as Crowley suggests, the future is simply a lens to view the present world. Thus, core to his argument, is the “problem with prediction”. But I don’t want to talk just about this argument and support/argue against it. The main purpose of my paper will be to explore what makes the temporal relationship between present, past, and future so complicated to the point that prediction is not impossible, but ultimately not intended for what it ostensibly is for. In other words, prediction is not just to predict what the future will hold, but rather serves many other purposes…

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Now bringing in other evidence, multimodal or primarily textual, I’ll explore what purposes prediction serves in our everyday lives and the lives of the future – or the past, even. Examples:

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Cascio, Jamais. “3 Reason Why Your Prediction Of The Future Will Go Wrong”. CoExist. https://www.fastcoexist.com/1681668/3-reasons-why-your-predictions-of-the-future-will-go-wrong

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Mims, Christopher. “Your Next Friend Could Be a Robot”. The Wall Street Journal. Web. http://www.wsj.com/articles/your-next-friend-could-be-a-robot-1476034599 (Links to an external site.)

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http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/the-meaning-of-utopia/ (Links to an external site.)

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All of these articles speak of prediction in some way, and hint at its particular purpose. The utopia article has a variety of perspectives, one suggesting the impossibility of perfection and the condition of human finiteness, another seeing it as possible only under developed and contained morals. In particular I aim to include evidence that seems much more unrelated and explore its deep connection to this topic to show how global and thorough the issue plagues us across all regions of space and time: past, present, future, here, there, anywhere.

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The mind map is a loose version of what I’ll be exploring in my essay and what kind of topics I want to relate my evidence to. Notice that I will have a central idea of “lens”, which is a visual, optical device that usually makes things clearer. But it can also skew ideas and create forced or unnatural perspectives.

 

EXPANDING ON BRAINSTORM

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Looking directly at my sources, I want to see which passages will be the most intriguing/will deepen the conversation on predictions.

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Starting with the multimodal episode of Black Mirror, let’s examine the scene where Bing is forced to watch Abi performing a sexual act on screen and he is unable to skip the content. Rather than bearing it out he is driven to madness as he bashes on the walls of his cell, unable to close his eyes or ears. A desire for silence, or lack of sensory stimulation, is not only indicative of a world where we have too much instantly gratified content and entertainment at our fingertips, but also shows the irony in the present world and its extension into the future. While the world is science-fiction, the character actions, reactions and motives are merely a reflection of the world of today, so arguably only the setting is a “prediction”. Also, the ability to use multimodal visual and aural elements contrasts with the textual nature of books, and in this case using a desire to return to silence of sound and sight, the show seems to beckon the simplicity and unobtrusiveness of books.

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Naturally extending into the realm of books, I would want to examine a passage in a science-fiction book to see how the book’s text relates to prediction. Consider Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, where Faber says to Montag:

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"Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores".

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Books, in the context of the novel, are dangerous because they free man’s mind. Rather than touting this censor-ful world as a real prediction of the future, Bradbury explains how powerful words are in cultivating the mind, invoking the sense of touch. Again, the book’s power is most relevant to the present, and does not serve to predict the future. I would like to bring up Crowley at this point to explain further how science-fiction serves a role in warning rather than predicting.

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October 14, 2016