What makes us different from who we are on a screen?

A Reflection on BRB.


The black mirror episode titled "BRB" had some very disturbing and unsettling depictions of what technology can develop into. In the episode, the woman looses her husband, but is quick to fill his space with a software that mimics who he is by looking at his social media. She then orders a robot version of her formal partner, and things begin to go downhill from there. It leads us to the question of "What makes us different from how we prevent ourselves on social media?"

The most obvious answer to this question is that you only present the best part of yourself. Most people do not post their hardships on social media unless it is for support of attention. When something truly bad happens in life, you turn to human connections, not digital ones. But lately in our society this trend has been shifting. More and more people turn social media to update the world on everything in their life. I assume that is why it was so easy for her partner to be recreated by a software. The distinction between who we are and who we are online begins to blur into the same person. We saw this first hand in this episode.

But regardless of how easily he was replicated, there were still parts of him that were not perfect. Though they were eerily similar, the robot was not perfect. This is were the concept of the Uncanny Valley comes into play. When the robot failed to be a perfect representation, it was very unsettling. The truth is, robots can never fully replicate who we are as people. There are so many minuet events in someone's life that make them who they are. A robot cannot learn everything that someone experiences. It isn't able to replicate the emotions, the experiences, and lessons that someone learns. This episode of black mirror depicts that.