<story><title>Vint Cerf sees his invention reflected on Black Mirror</title><url>https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/02/20/583682937/the-father-of-the-internet-sees-his-invention-reflected-back-through-a-black-mir</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Vaskivo</author><text>[OFF TOPIC]&lt;p&gt;Am I the only one who thinks Black Mirror is not that good?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen around five episodes and the only one I genuinely thought to be good was the very first one.&lt;p&gt;1 - The technology is extremely vague. There is no way to really gauge it&amp;#x27;s impact besides what the writer explicitly shows.&lt;p&gt;2 - The episodes are extremely moralist. They usually take a stance of &amp;quot;Look How Bad This Is&amp;quot;, usually using appeals to emotion. They don&amp;#x27;t show the other side, the good side of that concept.&lt;p&gt;3 - In my opinion, the story of most of them is uninteresting. The most egregious is the &amp;quot;eye camera&amp;quot; one. The whole episode drops you hints of how that technology affects society, but we are focused on a lovers quarrel.&lt;p&gt;4 - None of those show anything really new. If you removed the new concept, it would be _really_ easy to replace it with known stuff. In a world with a new disruptive technology they write people acting like they always did!&lt;p&gt;5 - This is mostly my elitism, but I hate most people&amp;#x27;s reaction to it. They see the episode, adore it, and just take it at face value. I watch it, think it&amp;#x27;s crap, and spend the next hour discussing it and thinking about it. Most people don&amp;#x27;t think beyond what is shown on the episode. I fear that that, coupled with (1) and (2), is making people fear technology [1].&lt;p&gt;(I have to add that the last minute of the &amp;quot;robot boyfriend&amp;quot; episode are so nuanced, subtle and insidious that I&amp;#x27;m amazed the writers managed to slip that through. Especially how dumbed down the whole episode was)&lt;p&gt;&amp;#x2F;rant&lt;p&gt;[1] I think people should be careful with technology. I have a bit of &amp;quot;privacy paranoia&amp;quot;. But that should come from reason.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tialaramex</author><text>Most people find that they like some Black Mirror episodes a lot more than others, it&amp;#x27;s inherent in the nature of this type of anthology SF format.&lt;p&gt;The people being people thing is _right_. A good antidote to the sort of beliefs we easily trick ourselves into here is to go read Samuel Pepys personal diary. Read about a year&amp;#x27;s worth, doesn&amp;#x27;t matter which bits, start in 1666 if you want to actually connect events to history (that&amp;#x27;s the year of the Great Fire of London). Pepys is over 350 years different in time from us. Yet he&amp;#x27;s not really different at all. He worries about money, he suffers illness, he moans about incompetent people, he lusts after pretty people who won&amp;#x27;t sleep with him (and to be fair, some who do). I say Pepys partly because he wrote this stuff down for his own records, whereas most earlier writers have an audience in mind and so we must assume they self-censor, and partly because he wrote just after English had settled down, his meaning is easy to follow without a modern translator between you adding their own interpretation.</text></comment>
<story><title>Vint Cerf sees his invention reflected on Black Mirror</title><url>https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/02/20/583682937/the-father-of-the-internet-sees-his-invention-reflected-back-through-a-black-mir</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Vaskivo</author><text>[OFF TOPIC]&lt;p&gt;Am I the only one who thinks Black Mirror is not that good?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen around five episodes and the only one I genuinely thought to be good was the very first one.&lt;p&gt;1 - The technology is extremely vague. There is no way to really gauge it&amp;#x27;s impact besides what the writer explicitly shows.&lt;p&gt;2 - The episodes are extremely moralist. They usually take a stance of &amp;quot;Look How Bad This Is&amp;quot;, usually using appeals to emotion. They don&amp;#x27;t show the other side, the good side of that concept.&lt;p&gt;3 - In my opinion, the story of most of them is uninteresting. The most egregious is the &amp;quot;eye camera&amp;quot; one. The whole episode drops you hints of how that technology affects society, but we are focused on a lovers quarrel.&lt;p&gt;4 - None of those show anything really new. If you removed the new concept, it would be _really_ easy to replace it with known stuff. In a world with a new disruptive technology they write people acting like they always did!&lt;p&gt;5 - This is mostly my elitism, but I hate most people&amp;#x27;s reaction to it. They see the episode, adore it, and just take it at face value. I watch it, think it&amp;#x27;s crap, and spend the next hour discussing it and thinking about it. Most people don&amp;#x27;t think beyond what is shown on the episode. I fear that that, coupled with (1) and (2), is making people fear technology [1].&lt;p&gt;(I have to add that the last minute of the &amp;quot;robot boyfriend&amp;quot; episode are so nuanced, subtle and insidious that I&amp;#x27;m amazed the writers managed to slip that through. Especially how dumbed down the whole episode was)&lt;p&gt;&amp;#x2F;rant&lt;p&gt;[1] I think people should be careful with technology. I have a bit of &amp;quot;privacy paranoia&amp;quot;. But that should come from reason.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Raphmedia</author><text>&amp;gt; Am I the only one who thinks Black Mirror is not that good?&lt;p&gt;I see it as a collection of short movies and not like a series. With that mindset, I only watch a few of &amp;quot;episodes&amp;quot; each season.&lt;p&gt;Since I only watch the movies that interest me, I really like Black Mirror.&lt;p&gt;Seen that way, it makes sense. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t watch a lot of those episodes if they were feature lentgh movies, so I don&amp;#x27;t watch them as short movies.&lt;p&gt;Every episode that interested me at first glance did not disappoint.</text></comment>