Discerning Reality From Fantasy: Reconsidering Our Reliance on Technology
“Please, I don’t want to do it,” the android mumbled, synthetic tears forming in the corner of his eyes. Martha frowned. Was he…how did he do that? How could he imitate him so well? “No, that’s not fair!” Martha shouted, watching the android plead for its life. Martha felt the tears slide down her cheeks, and shook her head as she took a step back. This android was not Ash; Ash was gone and he would never come back. “No!” Martha screamed.
This scene, from the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back,” illustrates a world in which people grieve through the comfort of androids who resemble the ones they lost. Although intended to help, the technological advancement ultimately does more harm than good, an example which parallels the worrisome repercussions—where technology has blurred the line between reality and artificiality—of advancements society experiences today.
The evolution of technology is often dramatized to suit the Hollywood standard in sci-fi movies or documentaries, but those depictions are not far from reality. The world now revolves around advancements in technology and social media. Two short stories by Alexander Weinstein, “Openness” and “Children of the New World”, as well as Black Mirror, an anthology series focused on the dangers of technology that is produced by Netflix, imply, rightly, that technology and social media perpetuate a lack of human interaction, and blur the distinction between what is real and artificial.
Both “Openness” and “Children of the New World” depict a world where human interaction and communication are lacking. In “Openness” the reader follows the life of Andy, a discontented young man who shares only the superficial parts of himself to a world in which “layers” are used to communicate with others. The “layers” make up for human interaction by allowing people to telepathically share their memories. Andy explains how the “layers” are a new form of communication, saying, “[i]t was tiring to labor through the sentences needed to explain how you ran into a friend–much easier to share the memory, the friend’s name and photo appearing organically” (185). This new advancement is so effective that people forget what it is like to talk normally with each other. When Andy meets Katie, a spirited teacher for senior citizens, she invites him to her lake house in Maine, and mentions that their “layers” will not work there. During this vacation, Andy has a difficult time trying to convey his thoughts and feelings. He struggles with something that used to once be customary.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m trying to. It’s just that without the ding it’s hard to know when you’re sending…I mean saying something…” I stopped talking, hating the clunkiness of words, and took a deep breath. “I guess I’m just rusty” (190). Andy has become so dependent on the “layers” that verbally interacting with Katie is a significant adjustment.
This same idea is examined in an episode of in Black Mirror entitled “The Entire History of You.” Similar to Weinstein’s “Openness,” the characters in this episode struggle with human interaction and communication. Instead of “layers,” a technological implant called “grains” records events as they happen, and can be replayed at any given moment, comparable to that of a surveillance camera. Liam and Ffion, the two characters in “The Entire History of You” are very similar to Andy and Katie. Although the “grains” do not take away human interaction, both of the devices pose as barriers to authenticity in the story. Liam discovers that Ffion has been cheating on him after noticing deleted memories in her “grain,” much like Andy discovers that Katie’s version of him is of a different man through their “layers.” Ultimately, both relationships are destroyed due to these new advancements. The technological world they live in led to a lack of communication, and both characters subsequently lost trust within their partners.
That technology can blur the distinction between what is real and artificial becomes increasingly apparent in Weinstein’s short story, “Children of the New World.” The narrator and his wife Mary cannot have children due to old age. However, in the New World, they are given the chance to create the family they have always wanted, with a virtual reality platform called the “New World.” Experiences such as pregnancy and normal human actions are imitated to create an enhanced reality. Through this technology, the couple is able to have children and relish a connection that they could not have previously. “We were free to experience a physical connection that we’d always longed for in the real world but had never been able to achieve” (84) “…Our lives were illuminated in a way we’d thought impossible in the physical world. Online, with our new family, we had found joy” (86).
Although this physical connection is felt, it is artificial. The narrator states that this connection was more of an “electric hum,” creating an imitation of human intimacy. Nonetheless, the line between reality and artificiality becomes shaky as the couple finds joy in a world of imitation. This line further blurs as the couple is forced to delete their children after a virus has infected them. When the supervisor explains a solution to this virus, the narrator argues with him:
“I’m afraid all of your family is corrupted”, the supervisor told me. “You’ll end up bringing the virus with you. It’s an easy process to reboot. Simply hold down the power button on your console for twenty seconds and—” “These are my children!” I yelled.
“If it’s any consolation, they won’t feel a thing; they’re just data” (91).
This scene presents a sharp contrast between someone who is enmeshed in the virtual world, and someone who is not. The narrator has grown so attached to his children that he sees them as real people rather than data, unlike the supervisor. He first recalls the little moments they shared, and is subsequently bombarded by memories of them after deletion.
“Sometimes, when evening comes and the light hits our home in a way that reminds us of that other life, we’ll talk about them. What their faces looked like, the feeling of their weight in our arms, the way our youngest would crawl onto my back…They weren’t real, we say, looking for confirmation. Right? Right. Then we get up, start dinner, and move on with our childless lives (83).
The narrator and his wife struggle with the feelings that their children left behind were real, even though the children themselves were always virtual. This struggle continues when they try to recover from their experience in the New World through a support group. The narrator explains that the people in this group will never understand what he and his wife have been through unless they have experienced it for themselves.
“…they never had kids on the other side. They comfort us for a while, a couple weeks, a month; they send sympathy cards and flowers, but in the end they all offer the same advice: It’s time to move on. They were were just programs. You can create new children. And we nod grimly, knowing full well we’ll never return (95).
This contrast further emphasizes the difference between those that know what is real and false. Here, virtual reality created a chain of events that left the couple heartbroken and damaged. To the couple, their children were viewed as human beings while to others, the story is dismissed as an unfortunate event. The narrator and his wife were deluded by the promises of the New World and left with deep feelings about virtual beings. “We were lonely. We were needful. We wanted to feel pleasure again, to be caressed and loved. Our longings were those of humans, not monsters” (95). After leaving the New World, human warmth and touch become foreign to the narrator and his wife. Virtual reality became a substitute for human interaction, a concept that is slowly evolving in today’s world; with the development of VR headsets, people are using this technology for a number of resources such as entertainment, education and career opportunities. While these advancements may create a more efficient society, the positions that belonged to humans are gradually being replaced by machines, indicating the world’s increasing dependence on technology.
Both of Weinstein’s stories imply that technology has the potential to replace human interaction, which can be dangerous, as artificiality can attract people into an unrealistic world filled with false riches and dreams. With only a virtual world to rely on, humans can become lonelier and hollow as a result of them chasing after a life that is not real.
Martha, from the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back,” parallels the characters in “Children of the New World,” as all similarly grapple with reality. Martha is in the same position as the narrator and Mary, as she uses technology to cope with the loss of her boyfriend, Ash. The synthetic version of Ash is used for physical comfort much like how the virtual children in “Children of the New World” provide comfort for the narrator and his wife. Although Martha understands that the synthetic version of Ash will never be the man that she fell in love with, still keeps him in her attic. The narrator and Mary continue to navigate in a world without their children but still keep the memory of them alive.
Ultimately, the Weinstein stories and Black Mirror episodes imply that technology in the future will perpetuate a lack of human interaction, blurring the distinction between what is real and artificial. “Openness” and “The Entire History of You” illustrate a world where people are dependent on an object to communicate. This leads to compromised relationships, as our lives revolve around objects and interfaces. “Children of the New World” and “Be Right Back” warn that technology and reality can merge together to create a fleeting sense of comfort that only results in a hollow feeling. Unfortunately, the ideas in the source material are uncomfortably close to reality. Today’s society is caught up in the world of technology; children depend on tablets for entertainment and learning, and many of us would rather stay on our devices than speak to each other, transfixed by the bubble of social media. Essentially, technology should be carefully monitored to avoid creating the horrifying dystopia that is often depicted in popular culture.
