What makes it so good is the fact that it is so believable. I wished I could come up with a 'white mirror' alternative where all our tech is used for good but it wouldn't be nearly as believable. Human nature being what it is you'd hope the future isn't even darker than what black mirror shows, it easily could be.
Star Trek TNG is as close to 'white mirror' as we'll ever get. A universe where human nature advances alongside technology. It's obviously way more far fetched and the show hasn't aged well though.
what is wrong with the Borg? I mean emotionally we all dislike it, yes. Yet speaking objectively, the Borg is the naturally highest state of developed life we can conceive off. Atoms makes molecules like proteins, lipids, etc., the molecules make cells, cells make organisms, organisms make society... The same cycles of assembly/integration and specialization, basically the same 2nd law driving life at different scales. Looking at the level of integration and specialization our society has so far reached i'd say it is just the level of primitive multi-cell organisms. The Borg is the natural state of society when the level of integration and specialization increases, and increasing of that level is just the 2nd law gradient in application to the live systems. Resisting it is just like insisting on staying "free" single cells instead of combining into organisms. The organisms would see the stars, the cells - no.
What's interesting is that throughout the different startreks. They touch on disconnected borg greatly depressed and missing the collective. There is less fear and more collaboration in the borg. And while individuality is reduced. There are still subtle differences between individuals and smaller groups. Though some accept and desire more individuality. And yet here we are today with so much interconnectedness and how lonely and disjoint so many people are. I definitely have things I'm embarrassed about but if there was an optional to join/leave collective I think it'd be neat/great.
We all only get to experience our single life. But to have opportunity to have memories and experience many more just sounds enticing to me. Borg isn't mindless. It is a collective where ones arguments don't need to be debated because you can reach better consensus because you can fully experience and understand the counterpoint and why views differ. We are all blind to our own anecdotal experiences.
> And while individuality is reduced. There are still subtle differences between individuals and smaller groups.
Exactly. General symmetry breakup process guarantees that uniformity in highly interconnected environment wouldn't be a stable state, ie. it means the necessary emergence of non-uniformity, basically individuality, at different scales - personal, group/team, cube, ... It is just that such individuality would look different as it will be driven by emerging non-uniformity instead of just physical barriers of our skulls.
We're heading toward the same thing every species before us has; death and extinction. We're just accelerating the process, and have the unique ability to anticipate it. Nothing has shown an ability to avert the inevitable however.
In what was is human diversity increasing? Broadcast television has been causing the decline of regional accents and increasing cultural homogenization for decades. Many obscure languages are dying out in favor of consolidation at the regional or national level.
In the past, humans were naturally diverse simply because there were so many distinct communities that hardly ever interacted with each other. Nowadays you might be exposed to many times more diversity than the average medieval peasant ever was but there's nothing contradictory about that happening as the total amount of diversity in the world continues to decrease.
You'll have a hard time convincing me that a world with several orders of magnitude more humans is somehow less diverse than the times with fewer humans unless you somehow remove the ability to process arithmetic from my brain.
Wait, how does more humans = more diversity? I would think any abstract measure of diversity would be based on average differences, or standard deviations away from the mean. Obviously, the absolute extremes are greater with more people, but it seems entirely logical to say diversity has decreased as the number of people increase.
Easy. The more populated world is the one that has a global telecommunications network, whose homogenizing influence far outweighs higher-order effects like population.
Hardly. Increasing connection is shifting us closer to a single world-culture every day, which has advantages and disadvantages. All the world's most powerful people wear Western-style suits and speak English.
This was my initial thought as well. But on further thought, it doesn't seem to be true. I think, with technology and inter-connectivity, we are getting exposed to diverse points of view more than ever before. It might eventually lead to one culture, but then that would be because we all learned from all the options and settled on the best combination.
Oh, each human being is definitely exposed to more diversity, but that doesn't mean the world is getting more diverse. Now, I can be English and interact with people who are French, German, American, Chinese and so on; previously, I could have spent my whole life only interacting with Anglo-Saxons, but not know about the Bretons, Picts, Gaels, Geats, Swedes, Goths, Navajo, Hopi, Anasazi and so on nearby and around the world.
Perhaps we'll settle on one culture as we choose the best one. I more imagine we'll end up with one culture in an endless echo chamber, forever unable to sense our own biases.
I don't find Star Trek believable at all, starting with the 'Warp Drive'. As soon as you add a device like that to a plot it becomes impossible to see it as a possible future.
I don't think it was supposed to be believable. It's a utopian society, reflecting the time in which it was conceived. The idea that society would be become more liberal, more socialistic, more tolerant by having greater access to information and not wanting for material goods is the more interesting one. We will be able to see if that's true over the next hundred years.
The Warp Drive is just a plot device, so that the humans can interact species from other, distant worlds.
Roddenberry surely intended it to be. It was the show he'd wanted to make all along, or a great deal closer to it than the original, in any case; since his death and especially since the show wrapped, many early screenwriters have described, in various fora, the extent to which he'd try to enforce the logical consequences of his political philosophy, such as the disappearance of workplace interpersonal conflict, a libertine attitude toward sexual activity, and such enduring peace both internal and external as to render unnecessary the maintenance of a military organization. After Roddenberry's ill health made it impossible for him to exert creative control, and especially after his death in 1991, TNG-era Trek evolved toward a more plausible portayal of its characters and societies.
You can reimagine most episodes without it. They're not visiting different planets in a spaceship, just different cities connected by a monorail. Er, hyperloop.
Or use wormhole technology to connect planets via a hyperloop like in "Pandoras Star". Interesting read how humanity would conquer other systems if space travel was irrelevant.
I love the show, but I find it unbelievable in the same way I find 1984 unbelievable. Both serve as brilliant reminders of what humanity could become if we succumbed to our darkest nature. But just by existing, they serve as warning signs of what we must not let happen.
I don't want to give away any spoilers since the twist is so brilliant, but I find "White Bear" particularly unbelievable. That episode rocked me to my core, but I also don't think it would actually happen.
> I wished I could come up with a 'white mirror' alternative where all our tech is used for good but it wouldn't be nearly as believable.
Why? Imagine:
Everyone on Earth, if they have a problem, can be connected to a handful of people who already had that problem and offer friendly advice free of charge. Where that advice is tied to purchases or revenues, the network of people facilitating this experience will take a cut.
If you want to do something, say, plant some tomatoes, you can ask an AI how to do it in a way that has a high probability of success. If you are willing to follow a set of specified terms (specific production standards, etc), the AI will offer you financing and a guaranteed buyer for the product. Extend this to every form of production. Pre-financed contractors are available to take over processes you'd rather not do, or to mentor you in processes you want to learn.
Imagine every neighborhood, every culture, every regional cuisine, every micro-ecology, every species and family all has a hive of autonomous micro-corporations surrounding it, helping keep those cultures alive, keeping participants solvent and supporting its economy. Imagine people who are sick of the vanilla-ifying and globalization of culture have an alternative supported by a federation of tiny businesses powered by decentralized software... businesses that never could have existed in the "Minimum 10 Head Count Million Dollar Market Cap" business development physics of today, but are trivially financed by autonomous HR AIs with micropayment accounts.
Right now the systems we have to do these two things are imperfect, but I believe this is the future the internet/open source/open culture/non-profit/DIY/decentralization/blockchain crowd is driving toward. I welcome anyone who thinks these three goals are impossible. But imagine that we can get there. What would we do with such technologies? I think the ramifications are fascinating.
What if there are 400 million forest rangers roving the planet relocating endangered species to nearby biomes where they can survive for a few more decades?
What if the stories of the poor and the out-of-touch-with-production-culture can be told and shared, instead of being locked out of the media financing landscape?
What if the people whose home cooking you love to eat could just cook all day and live off the money?
What if you could get paid to take care of any sick person you wanted, because they're worth more to the economy healthy?
To me, there are so many beautiful uses of technology that I am certain we will get to. Black Mirror is spot-on in its worries. But I'm chock full of equivalent hopes.
I described a couple of AIs that do a couple of very specific things well. They probably won't even be able to understand each other. An AI that "is never wrong" is complete science fiction.
General AI is a fascinating thing to imagine, and great fodder for fiction, but it has no basis in science.
