In the episode of Black Mirror ,"Be Right Back", we was shown how technology is becoming an extension of ourselves. This is shown through the character, Martha. Martha's husband, Ash, was killed in a car accident; to cope with the loss, her friend, Sara, told her about and signed her up for a program that allowed for Martha to communicate with "Ash" even after he died. This "Ash" was different, he wasn't the Ash that died but the mixture of all his emails. These emails created a false Ash that can replicate what the original Ash would respond to a given situation. Martha was skeptical about the program at first but eventually she started to see "Ash" as her deceased husband. During the middle of the episode she dropped her phone at the doctor, therefore shutting down "Ash" and she broke down and quickly went home to fix her phone.
Her connection to the synthetic Ash and the incident at the doctor's caused her to take drastic measures to keep "Ash" around. She bought a synthetic body for "Ash" and proceeded to grow closer to this Ash. She eventually reached the point in which is called "the uncanny valley" where she knew that "Ash" wasn't her husband and she started to become upset due to "Ash" not showing all the qualities of her husband. She eventually attempted to get "Ash" to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff near where they lived; when "Ash" was going to do so she became enraged as she believed her husband would have pleaded for life instead of so calmly accepting death. This caused for "Ash" to plead for his life as she wanted. The episode cut to several years in the future were Martha and her daughter live in their home with "Ash" in the attic.
This showed that even with Martha knowing that 'Ash" is not truly Ash, she could not come to let "Ash" go. This showed me even if we know that something looks human and acts human but we clearly know that it isn't human, that we will dealt with the fact that something isn't human if it will allow us to have the person around. By doing so, we are in turn becoming more technological in nature and we are allowing technology to become more human. I believe this to be so because if us as a species are willing to have something replace a deceased human for the simple fact of that person being "able" to be around again, we abandon the humanity in us by abandoning our bonds to the original person and replacing those bonds with something that can never be the person that you remembered. I feels this also paved the way for technology to advance and to grow to the point that it becomes truly "human-like" to the point where no one can tell the difference.
Very good post Donal. While we usually worry about the ways in which robots become like humans, it is also important to consider the ways in which humans are becoming more like robots. Good discussion.
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