Black Mirror: A Look Into Memory’s Darkest Chambers, How Technology and Science-Fiction are Merging

This paper aims to examine memory technologies and the use of memory theory in the show Black Mirror.

Introduction

Science-fiction writers have been intrigued by ideas of technology interlaced with human memory for hundreds of years. Explored extensively throughout the history of science fiction, the intermingling of memory and technology has played an imperative role in shaping modern technological advances. Memory technology has been studied and philosophized within the world of science-fiction. Emerging from the fringes of counter-culture, memory and technology are being investigated in media more than ever before. Prevalent in science-fiction since its beginnings, the use of memory recording technology has intrigued writers, filmmakers, creators, innovators, and engineers. In fact, memory technology within science-fiction stems as far back as the 1950s with Sohl’s “The Altered Ego”(1954), and sequentially continued to be explored in novels like Silverbeg’s “To Live Again” (1969), Rucker’s “Software”(1982), and Egan’s Disapora (1997), amongst dozens of other novels, movies, and television shows. These science-fiction media productions have directly led to the progression of memory technology in today’s world, with renowned innovators such as Martin Cooper1 and Arthur C. Clarke2 crediting their inspirations for technological innovation to science-fiction. As technology advances, science fiction’s reign as a futuristic genre is changing. Story plots are often being set in nearfutures which closely resemble today’s world.

Perhaps one of the clearest, most in-depth modern explorations of memory and technology in science-fiction to date can be seen within the series Black Mirror. Black Mirror, a show which premiered in 2011, is a Netflix original set in a near-future that is almost identical to that of today’s world. Black Mirror is a non-linear show with each episode featuring a separate set of characters. While the series is set in a strikingly ominous near-future world, each episode follows different sets of characters who have access to completely different types of memory technologies and live in vastly diverse communities with dissimilar customs and ways of life. Black Mirror focuses specifically on the uses and misuses of technology, with quite a few episodes about the ways in which technology could potentially influence our memories and understandings of history. Using textual and content analysis, I aim to answer the question: How does Black Mirror address memory through its use of technological advancement? In address to my question, I will apply memory studies to three Black Mirror episodes, “The Entire History of You” (2011), “Be Right Back” (2013), and “San Junipero” (2016). Each episode marks a separate section of my essay where I apply memory studies and theories, and respectively is followed by a real-life example of technology used within the episode. Memory studies, a term coined by social scientist and media historian, Steve Anderson, refers to a “way of looking at historical reception, what people remember of history, and the ways it is made useful in their lives”(Anderson, 21). Within this essay I will continuously refer to memory technology, which I use in regards to the different types of technologies that are created in the series to record or capture one’s memories. I will also use the term memory technology in reference to the up-and-coming technologies that are being 4 developed to improve memory in humans today. My research is by nature preliminary and not meant to be exhaustive, but I am unequivocal in my intent to identify uses of memory technology within Black Mirror and discuss the direct relation to modernday memory technology and memory studies.

“The Entire History of You”

In the episode “The Entire History of You,” all citizens must have a memory chip implanted into their brain, as well as accompanying eye monitors which can display information delivered from the chip. Memory chips are utilized for national security, as civilians must forfeit their memories before getting onto airplanes to assure they have not been a part of any terrorist plot, or something similarly dangerous. However, the show focuses on the way that these memory chips have the capacity to deteriorate relationships, employment, and even the sanity of the user. Liam, the main character, begins to lose his sanity by repeatedly watching an appraisal of his job. He believes he will be laid off. He returns home to his wife, Ffione, who is attending a dinner party, only to see her behaving differently with her guests than she does with him. After the party and some excessive prying, Liam concludes his wife has cheated on him. He forces her to forfeit her memories to him, playing them on the television. This episode provides an interesting perspective on the current rates of development of memory technology and our ability to record more than we ever have before.

The first introduction to memory technology in “The Entire History of You” is when Liam enters a taxi after his work appraisal. Worried that it did not go over well, Liam decides to redo his memory, a term that is used often throughout the episode. A redo entails a user accessing memories from his or her grain, which is a memory recording device implanted 5 behind the ear and linked to neural pathways in the brain. A grain allows a user to replay their memories, accessing very specific details spanning throughout the entirety of their lives. However, before Liam enters the taxi and can use his grain, he is first forced to watch a commercial which states,

Live, breathe, smell. Full spectrum memory. You can get a willow grain upgrade for less than the price of a daily cup of coffee, and three decades of backup for free. In-store, in-grain procedure with local anesthetic and you are good to go. Because memory is for living.

(“The Entire History of You”)

The statement at the end of this advertisement represents the strong societal push to have the newest types of grain advancements, but the implication of the commercial is that the grain industry is a private business that relies on advertisements to make money. French historian, philosopher, and social critic, Michael Foucault writes about the power of those who control access to and distribution of media. He writes, “…if one controls people’s memory, one controls their dynamism. And one also controls their experience, their knowledge of previous struggles”(Film in Popular Memory, 253). Due to privatized modes of access to memory from grain technology, grain developers would seem to have ultimate rule over which advertisements consumers are exposed to. Experiences are then dictated by advertisers who, using extreme forms of product placement, have direct influence on one’s dynamism. Invasive advertisements within one’s own memory are not only a breach of privacy, but an extreme form of psychological power over someone.

British Historian and Media Critic, Peter Burke argues that history is a social memory, or a complicated process of selecting and interpreting the link between the homology of how the past is remembered and recorded(189). He states that memories are directly affected by the social transmissions of various employed media and outlines five of 6 the most basic forms of social organization: oral traditions, memoirs and other written records, pictorial or photographic images, the transmission of skills and memories, and space, or the value that comes from placing images in specific locations to remember them (189-190). How can, or can any, of these five types of social organizations of memories within a population be applied to “The Entire History of You”? After Liam learns of Ffione’s transgressions, he walks around the rooms of their house, redoing memories in each, using space and the value of location to assign meaning and emotion to physical locations. In the first redo, Ffione sits at the counter eating a bowl of cereal, but looks up at him with a huge smile on her face when he enters the room. Then Liam snaps back to reality, staring at their empty kitchen, wondering when was the last time he saw Ffione smile like that. The next redo shows Ffione holding their baby, Joanie, and the two looking back happily at Liam. Again, Liam returns abruptly to reality. Liam’s grain device provides him with the ability to place virtual images in specific locations and gain value from those memories. Rooms serve as a site of memory for Liam, who walks around the home he shares with Ffione and Joanie in order to relive the happy times he craves so much. With the grain technology in “The Entire History of You,” each room Liam enters serves as a space of memory for him to reexperience moments from the past, assigning special value to certain memories.

In Philip M. Taylor’s piece, The First Flawed Rough Draft of History, Taylor argues that the mass public are not simply “passive observers,” but rather “actual participants”(245) in the mainstream portrayal of memory and history. Taylor’s main objective is to shed light on the idea that historians often disregard media history as unreliable, or only a secondary source of information. If, in the future, grain technology becomes readily available, Taylor need not worry any longer about historians discounting 7 memory as a valid source of information. Raised as an issue in “The Entire History of You,” a woman, named Colleen, who attends the dinner party states, “Did you know half of the organic memories you have are junk? Just not trustworthy”(“The Entire History of You”). She goes on to explain about false memories, and how people can be manipulated into believing they have experienced things that they have not. In a series of well-known memory studies (Vitelli, 2) done at University of California, Irvine, Ph.D. Elizabeth Loftus and her team tested whether it is possible to implant false memories within someone’s memory. After completing hundreds of experiments involving thousands of subjects, they concluded that one could implant false memories into someone’s mind simply by stating an untrue fact from the past as factual or asking leading questions about an event that did not take place. Some memories were easily provoked, while more extreme examples of false memories were induced in as many as a quarter of test subjects. Would grain memory chips erase the stigma around applying human memory to use for historical analysis? Likely yes, due to the intense clarity of memories preserved by grain technology. If memory chips are invented, historians could rely substantially on using memory for forming factual historical accounts. It would become virtually impossible for humans to be passive observers of the creation of historical documents.

While grain memory chips may seem like an unrealistic reach at the progression of personal computers and smartphones, there is a scene in “The Entire History of You” that I will apply to a real-world example to provide social commentary on recent practices of the American government to secure their borders. Before Liam is to return home from work to attend the dinner party with Ffione, he must catch a flight. Airport security in “The Entire History of You” is eerily similar to that of what is beginning to happen in airports around the 8 world today, but specifically in the United States. In a recent article titled, I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again—neither should you, Quincy Larson, a well-respected software engineer, data security analyst, and founder of the nonprofit organization freeCodeCamp, writes about the recent experience of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist. Sidd Bikkannavar, a U.S.-born engineer for NASA, was detained upon re-entry to the United States after a trip abroad, shortly after Trump’s travel ban was initiated at the beginning of 2017 (Larson). Detained by Customs and Border Patrol, Bikkannavar’s release was tangible, but only if he gave the agents access to his cell phone. Customs officers demanded he handed over the phone to be released, even after Bikkannavar informed them that the phone belonged to NASA and contained sensitive information. Bikkannavar was not the first, nor last, American citizen to receive this type of treatment at the border. Since the beginning of 2017, the United States Customs and Border Patrol has implemented many new forms of security, one of which involves downloading the entire contents of a traveler’s phone onto Customs and Border Patrol computers for further analysis. Imagine the extensive database of personal information that the agency can legally take from anyone, including but not limited to emails, Dropbox files, social media accounts and passwords, browser and search history, as well as photos and videos.

“The Entire History of You” explores one of the earliest science-fiction-created memory technologies, the memory chip, but provides a new take on the implications such technology may have on the human psyche. While it may seem incredible to remember every single detail of your life, the negative repercussions are high, as demonstrated by Liam’s concluding actions by the end of the episode, when he pries his grain out of his head using only a razorblade and his fingers. 9 “Be Right Back”

You click the link, and you talk to it. You type messages in, like an email. And then it talks back to you, just like he would. It’s software. It mimics him. You give it someone’s name. It goes back and reads through all the things they’ve ever said online—their Facebook updates, their tweets. Anything public. I just gave it Ash’s name and the system did the rest. Just say hello to it. If you like it, you can then give it access to his private emails. The more it has, the more it’s him.

(“Be Right Back”)

The service, which provides a platform to stay in touch with deceased relatives and friends, utilizes information from the deceased’s computers and phones to create the most realistic computer recreation. The technology creates an almost-exact replication of the way the deceased typed, their voice, and if the user chooses to proceed, even a functional replica of their body. The computer develops the face and body, and all other physical characteristics, of the deceased, creating a near-clone. Of course, this portrayal of the future is not far-off. The writer, Charlie Brooker, mentions both Facebook and Twitter, social media networks that, realistically, may not be around within twenty years, or less.

In Hoskin’s essay Flashbulb Memories, he defines flashbulb memory as a term that “describes human memory that can… be recalled very vividly and in great detail, as though reproduced directly from the original experience”(147). In “Be Right Back”, Martha goes on walks with the virtually created voice of her deceased husband, Ash, before she chooses to recreate his physical body. Though he is dead, she speaks with an automated recreation of his voice through the telephone, which is created by accessing a compilation of various videos and voice messages that Ash had on his social media accounts. As Martha walks and talks with the fabricated voice of Ash, she recalls memories to him that are rich and personal, as if she is trying to teach the artificial Ash about the special times she shared with Ash. The sensory stimulants she experiences arouse flashbulb memories within her, which she then uses in attempts to emotionally connect with this artificial Ash. These recollections are described in intense details and seem to be instigated by the environmental elements Martha is aroused by on her walk, such as warm sunshine, a hike through the woods, and the view as she completes her hike. Martha’s shared experiences with Ash are reproduced as flashbulb memories when she reenacts times they had previously spent together, instigating a strong emotional response. Although memory technology that replicates the deceased may seem farfetched, the ability of artificial intelligence closer than ever before to allowing humans to interact with the deceased.

With the advancement of memory technology, we are gaining access to new ways of remembering the dead. From a company that offers to compress one’s ashes 11 into a personally curated vinyl1 to Facebook’s new digital graveyard2, there are more ways than ever to curate memories of yourself for your loved ones after your passing. Perhaps one of the most eerie new methods of real-life memory technology used to remember the dead is a code created by software engineer, Eugenia Kuyda. After losing her best friend, Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda decided to find a way to continue speaking to him after his passing(Speak, Memory, Newton). Some of Mazurenko’s friends had suggested a coffee-table book or website to serve as a memorial for him, and Mazurenko himself had even applied for a fellowship with the proposal of a new form of cemetery which he called Taiga, memorial forests where bodies would be buried in biodegradable capsules that would grow into trees with digital displays placed at the trunk. However, Kuyda had other ideas, refusing to let go of Mazurenko and believing there had to be a better way to memorialize him. She collected text messages that were sent to her by Mazurenko. Leaving aside the ones that were too personal, Kuyda fed the rest of the messages into a neural network built by developers at her artificial intelligence startup, Luka, located in San Francisco, California. What if it could be possible to create a messaging bot that directly mimicked an individual’s writing and texting patterns? Kuyda and her team of artificial intelligence (A.I.) developers did just that—they recreated an A.I. bot of Mazurenko that responded to messages sent from Kuyda, Mazurenko’s family and friends, and eventually even strangers1. With powerful A.I. developments such as this, many questions come to mind. What are the ethical ramifications of keeping someone alive without their consent? Is an A.I. bot an appropriate way to grieve and mourn over the loss of a loved one? What will come next in memory technology development in regards to remembrance of a lost loved one? “Be Right Back” explores the possible answers to these questions and examines the potentials mishaps of such innovations in memory technology.

“Be Right Back” concludes by leaving the audience to ponder the negative ramifications of being unable to forget and powerless to move on. Jumping eight years in the future, we watch Martha return home with her now 8-year-old daughter. They are celebrating her birthday, and her daughter says they need to cut three slices of cake so she can take one upstairs, to which Martha replies, “It’s not the weekend”(“Be Right Back”). We quickly learn that Ash’s replica is kept upstairs, tucked away in his attic bedroom. The replicated Ash has become a marker of Martha’s inability to move on. The past haunts her, but she has also passed along her memories of Ash, in a physical form, to her daughter. In Marianne Hirsch’s The Generation of Postmemory, Hirsch argues that memories and experiences of traumatic events from the past live on to stain the lives of generations to follow who were not personally there to experience them. She writes,

Postmemory describes the relationship that the generation of those who witnesses cultural or collective trauma bears to the experiences of those who came before, experiences that they ‘remember’ only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up. (Hirsch, 347)

Martha’s daughter, unnamed in the episode, grows up in an environment where the memory of her dead father, whom she has never had the chance to meet, lives on. Martha keeps the replicated Ash alive because of the strong emotional attachment she had to Ash. The trauma of Ash’s car accident and consequential death has lived on with Martha from the moment she decided to create a fabricated version of him. Martha’s decision to keep replicated Ash around has not only impacted her, but also has a strong impact on the life of her daughter. Her daughter grows up unable to meet her real father, but lives in a house where every day she knows that there is a man living upstairs whom she calls Ash. Through Martha’s trauma, her daughter experiences a sort of postmemory where she is unable to escape the suffering her mother faced after losing her husband and the father of her child. Because A.I. technology exists today where we can “interact” with the deceased, the ramifications of the grieving process must be closely examined to assure emotional delay in the aftermath of a traumatic event does not lead to disturbing postmemory for generations to follow. “San Junipero”

The year is 1987. The Iran-Iraq war has reached a stalemate, the stock markets recently crashed, President Ronald Reagan is still in the White House (30 Years Ago, Taylor), and a young woman walks into a bar as the new hit single “Heaven Is A Place on Earth”(1987) by Belinda Carlisle blasts through the speakers. She meets another woman and they share a romantic spark that turns into a one-night stand. Yorkie, desperate to contact Kelly again, would do anything to speak to her. She asks a friend of Kelly’s if he has heard from her and he responds, “Try a different time. Seen her in the 80s, 90s, even 2002 one time”(San 14 Junipero). Once a week, Yorkie visits the same bar looking for Kelly, but the bar is visibly different, as if each week it is situated in a different time period, with distinctive fashion and music from the time flooding the dancefloor. The year is 1987… or is it? Kelly and Yorkie are simulations in a completely virtual world called San Junipero. In the real world, Yorkie has been in a coma ever since she was 21 years old and Kelly is quickly approaching death. San Junipero provides the deceased a place to live on, and living civilians have access to test the technology so as to make a decision about whether they want to pass on naturally, or to San Junipero. The memories of the dead are conserved and live together in a computer-generated reality.

The city of San Junipero serves as a type of active memorial for the dead. Those approaching death are able to visit and interact with the deceased, and the deceased are able to, in a sense, live on forever in a virtual world. Pierre Nora, a French historian, has written extensively on lieux de mémoire, or sites of memory. He says that lieux de mémoire is a necessary term because “there are no longer milieu de mémoire, real environments of memory”(Les Lieux de Mémoire, Nora, 7). San Junipero is a fictional representation of a lieux de mémoire. The city is not a real environment of memory, but a site that holds and embodies the memories of the deceased. Because residents of San Junipero can choose the decade they wish to live within, each generational iteration of the city represents a time passed that no longer exists—a site of memory. Deceased minds go to these sites because during their lifetimes they experienced the greatest joys in these time periods, and the memories of them are so positive that they wish to return to them forever.

In another essay titled Generation, Nora outlines the rise of the term “generation” and how the term was coined as a means of “nostalgic stocktaking”(Generation, Nora, 500), or 15 the idea that a generation could be sold to the masses by appealing to the nostalgia of the time. “San Junipero,” which is for the most part set in 1987, relies heavily on the use of generational identity. After Kelly and Yorkie first meet, Yorkie is unwavering in her attempts to see Kelly again. As she primps herself to go back to the bar each week, she listens to various cassettes. Mimicking scenes from numerous movies and music videos from the 1980s, Yorkie changes in and out of different outfits, each representative of the generational styles of the time. First, Yorkie listens to “Girlfriend in a Coma”(1987) by The Smiths. She is dressed in her typical dorky apparel, wearing pastels and large-lensed glasses, two stylistic choices often adorned by Morrissey, lead singer of The Smiths. Next, Yorkie plays “Don’t You Forget About Me”(1985) by Simple Minds, adorned in a white lace headband, frilly pink blouse, and white and pink floral skirt. The outfit is almost identical to that of Allison at the end of The Breakfast Club (1985) when Claire gives her a makeover so that she can win over Andrew. Thereafter, Yorkie’s next cassette plays “Heart and Soul”(1987) by T’Pau, and Yorkie’s hair is up in luscious curls as she wears a tight, crimped, lilac dress and large, dangling earrings. For this look, Yorkie peers into the mirror and does a shimmy dance move, something she is visibly uncomfortable with. The shimmy was a popular dance move throughout history, but experienced a resurgence in the late 1970s and 1980s disco culture (StreetSwing). Succeeding T’Pau, Yorkie plays “Addicted to Love”(1987) by Robert Palmer, ornamented in the notorious black dressed, slicked back hair, smokey eyeshadow, and bright-red lips worn by the dancers in the original music video. Finally, “Wishing Well”(1987) by Terence D’Arby plays from the cassette, and Yorkie leaves the house wearing a casual and comfortable outfit that is similar to the style of clothing worn by D’Arby’s band. These songs and outfit changes all pay homage to either the year 1987 specifically, or 1980s 16 culture as a whole. Due to the car accident that left her comatose since 1987, Yorkie never experienced a time beyond the 1980s. She identifies deeply with the culture of the 1980s. According to Nora, “A generation is a category of representative comprehension; it is a violent affirmation of horizontal identify that suddenly dominates and transcends all forms of vertical solidarity”(Generation, 504). “San Junipero” examines the link between memory, nostalgia, and generations by allowing each individual member of society to select the most ideal year to live. In the city of San Junipero, time does not progress, it stays stagnant, but citizens can move from year to year through the computer program if they so please. The episode makes many references to people’s identity within the generation they decide to partake in. There is a point where Yorkie finds Kelly in the early 2000s, and aggressively asks her, “How the hell is this your era”(San Junipero)? While Yorkie can relate to Kelly in the 1980s, her lack of vertical solidarity with Kelly when she is part of another generation, the 2000s, creates an emotional, cultural, and generational divide between the two women.

“San Junipero” is an intriguing episode in regards to memory. It addresses the fear of death that many people face, as well as the ethical questions of conserving your memory as a means of living forever. The memory technology within the episode provides Yorkie the chance to live a normal life after spending the majority of her life in a coma. For Kelly, the technology serves as a means to explore her non-heteronormative sexual desires she kept repressed throughout her dedicated marriage. While both women gain positive experiences from visiting the city of San Junipero, they must ultimately decide on the conservation of their memory and mind.

The Argos Files

I would like to briefly pay homage to an up-and-coming, science-fiction virtual reality series in attempts to shed light on the progress that technology is now having on the creation of new media. I have previously discussed the ways in which science fiction has advanced memory technology, but I have made no reference to how memory technology is now inspiring science-fiction. Director Josema Roig and producer Michael Steiner have worked together to create one of the greatest breakthroughs in virtual reality film to date. The Argos Files (2016), an interactive series of seven virtual reality (V.R.) films, to be released within the next few years, takes the user on a first-person ride through memory. Once the user puts on their V.R. headset, they enter the body of Detective Travis Brody in the year 2029. Detective Brody’s job entails him to uncover the truth behind suspected homicides, murders, and other attacks by entering the minds of the deceased and sifting through their final hours of life. The Argos Files, while a fictional story, explores the potential for police forces to utilize memory to solve crime, a concept also touched upon in the Black Mirror episode “White Christmas”(2014).

The development of virtual reality technology, such as the Oculus Rift1 and the Nokia OZO2, has led creators in the science-fiction world to develop new ideas and concepts. With novel technological advancements, science-fiction storytelling is becoming a fully-immersive experience, and The Argos Files attempts to do just that. Magnopus, a visual development company founded by Academy Award winners used the Nokia OZO, OZO Software Suite, NUKE and CARA VR (Nokia) to create the innovative and immersive experience that is The Argos Files. It has been clear throughout history that science-fiction has led to the to many innovations in memory technology, but now we can also trace the links between modern memory technology and the influence it has on new science-fiction productions.

Conclusion

The memory technologies used in Black Mirror address innumerable concepts of memory theory and its application. Analysis of the episodes “The Entire History of You,” “Be Right Back,” and “San Junipero” revealed the various ways that memory theory is implemented as a form of storytelling within the science-fiction genre. By identifying the various memory technologies used in each Black Mirror episode, the direct relation to the ways science-fiction has influenced the creation of actual technologies in the real world, as well as the undeviating relationship to memory studies and theories, the connections to the series and memory studies are clear. Introductory by nature, the potential to further explore this concept in-depth is grand, and my research provides a platform for supplementary and additional work to be done. Intrigued by ideas of technology and human memory working in synchronicity for years, science-fiction authors have drawn-out the blueprints for countless technological developments in the field of memory. The technology created in Black Mirror could potentially influence scientists, data engineers, and programmers to ask themselves the question, “Is this sort of memory technology possible, and if so, how 19 do I make it work?” Technology has always drawn ideas from science-fiction, but now science-fiction too can draw its own ideas from technology.

A full list of references can be found here: https://pastebin.com/cSCTcA7c