[ViktorRay]

I disagree with the premise of this article.

Sometimes an extremely pessimistic vision of a possible future CAN change things...by making it so people are determined to fight to prevent that possible future from ever happening.

The novel 1984 by George Orwell was published in 1948. It is an extremely pessimistic vision of a possible future for mankind....and many of us over the generations who read it really really did not want to live in such a future and acted accordingly.

Black Mirror's pessimism could be similar.

Also in Black Mirror technology in of itself is never portrayed as inherently bad in any episode. It is the people and the way they choose to use the technology that leads to the horror. In that way every Black Mirror episode has that element of optimism. If only each new piece of tech in reality could ever be introduced so we maximize the positives rather than the negatives.

[dataviz1000]

"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair published in 1906 described an extremely pessimistic vision of the exploitation of the American factory worker. The descriptions of the meat packing industry in the book led to passing of the Meat Inspection Act. Sinclair was frustrated that most people were more concerned about eating bovine tuberculosis infected beef than the exploitation of people, but, nonetheless, it was pessimistic novel which lead to positive action.

[epolanski]

Me too I also dislike the cherry picked and wrongly built narrative, see the nuclear one.

> In contrast, France ran from the past towards the future, overcoming public fears of nuclear disasters, now getting 70% of its electricity from nuclear power.

France has put a single reactor online in the last 25 years, it has closed reactors and cancelled building new ones for some time.

The problem has always been financial with other sources becoming simply cheaper, more competitive and easier/quicker to put online.

[kelseyfrog]

To be fair, the reason behind this was the arguably poor decision decades ago to overbuild reactor capacity.

[epolanski]

France sells energy to it's neighbors.

[rufus_foreman]

>> many of us over the generations who read it really really did not want to live in such a future

You live in exactly that future.

The screens that you watch, watch you. You can't escape them in your own home, let alone in public.

Words are redefined by the elite at their whim, as they were in the novel.

Very few would dare to publicly align themselves with the nation which we have always been at war with.

You live in that world now.

[int_19h]

If we did, you wouldn't be able to post this comment.

[alabastervlog]

I wonder if any ancient Greeks leveled this same criticism at Aesop’s Fables.