2018: The Year When Some ‘Black Mirror’ Tech Turned Real
Here’s a look at some of the technology advances in 2018, that are eerily similar to those seen in Black Mirror.
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Fans of the web series Black Mirror will find that the world in 2018 edged closer to a future imagined in the show. Let’s hope that the tech we have seen emerge doesn’t exactly head into a dystopian future like the series makes it out to be. Yet, some of the tech is scary.
We’ve compiled a list of developments in technology in the past year that bear strong resemblance to the tech portrayed in the web series Black Mirror. Are you ready for it?
Self-Driving Delivery Vans
At CES 2018, Toyota showcased a concept vehicle in association with Pizza Hut for pizza delivery. It’s a self-driving pizza-delivery van of the future, and is likely to roll out commercially by 2020 in select areas.
In the Black Mirror episode ‘Crocodile’, a self-driving pizza delivery van is involved in an accident that then spirals into a chain of events.
Self-driving cars have made huge advances this year with Google testing out its Waymo cars even more. Uber got embroiled in controversy when one of its self-driving cars met with an accident, killing a cyclist.
Humanoid Robots
The Black Mirror episode ‘Be Right Back’ has a woman who loses her boyfriend recreate him in a humanoid form, with memories culled from his social media profiles. The android learns through artificial intelligence and responds to her.
That tech is pretty similar to what we have seen in 2018 with Sophie the robot globally and closer home, robot RJ Rashmi that is a co-host on a radio show in India. There are also chat bots like Microsoft’s Ruuh, that chats just like a human friend on Facebook Messenger. And then there’s Bina 48, a robot, that looks like a human that was part of a winning team on a university debate program in California.
Robot Dogs
Remember the robot guard dog in the Black Mirror episode ‘Metalhead’? Well, that is a reality now, with Boston Dynamics.
Earlier this year, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos tweeted a photo of him taking his robot dog for a walk at Amazon’s technology conference MARS 2018.
The Boston Dynamics dog can walk and run like a normal dog. And it can also open doors, something an normal dog can’t do. Plenty of advancement has been made on these robotic dogs this year.
You also have technology like artificial electronic noses now replacing sniffer dogs in airports to sniff for drugs and contraband. Then there is Asimo, Honda’s robot, that can walk, dance and even interact with humans. Yep, it’s all very real.
Social Credit System
This has got to be the downside of too much social media. In the Black Mirror episode ‘Nosedive’, the protagonist is very worried about her ‘social’ score, where everyone is constantly ‘rating’ everyone, much like one likes / dislikes posts on Facebook or Instagram. That rating system is tied to certain benefits – like entry to some clubs or apartments.
Well, China has started a similar rating system. It’s a sort of social credits system to ensure good discipline and good behaviour among its citizens. It’s kind of like the CIBIL rating scores you get for your financial prudence.
Home Assistants
In the Black Mirror episode title ‘White Christmas’, a digital assistant is created using a person’s consciousness. This is embedded inside a cookie bot – something that looks a lot like a Google Home or Amazon Alexa smart speaker.
This bot can control all the home functions - lights, oven, air-conditioning, curtains, play music etc. These are functions that even Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa can do. Google’s Assistant now behaves like a human with the ‘continued conversation’ feature coming to the smart speaker.
Facial Recognition in Crowds
Crowd control and identifying people in public areas has always been a challenge. However, cameras and surveillance software has now come of age and can identify a person in a crowd, and quickly build a profile on him/her. This tech was seen at the recent India Mobile Congress as well (in the video below).
This tech comes in multiple episodes of Black Mirror, but the one where it has a pretty serious use case is the episode titled ‘Hated in the Nation’, where drones (like bees) are fitted with surveillance cameras and can spy on citizens. These bees (or ADIs as they are called in the episode) identify their target and home in using their cameras.
There are plenty of other Black Mirror references in current technology, like the ‘Waldo Moment’ character which is similar to one of the animojis on the Apple iPhone X. Or the tech shown in ‘Entire History of You’, where snapshots of your life can be captured in a grain. Such tech can be seen with Snapchat’s glasses or the Google glass experiment.
What’s to come in 2019? Plenty we think.
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