The Future of Our Brains – Health in Black Mirror

Black Mirror, the iconic British anthology series asks what could happen to our identities, memories, social and personal selves, life and death after getting in touch with the digital. What could happen to the most complex and least understood human organ, the brain, being exposed to powerful, dimension-altering perception? We pondered on whether the current state of technology and research could ever take us on the dystopian, blind alley called future in Black Mirror. [SPOILER ALERT: the article contains a detailed description of episodes] Waldo’s predictions of politics On the day after the U.S. election, when everyone around the world woke up to the fact that Donald Trump was going to be the 45th President of the United States, the official Twitter-feed of Black Mirror read that “This isn’t an episode. This isn’t marketing. This is reality.” The chilling line might have referred to the striking similarities between the IRL election campaign and the episode called The Waldo Moment – when a disappointed, bitter comedian runs for office as a cartoon character, and voters find the “performance” so entertaining and so much “more real” than politicians that they actually let it into power. French postmodern philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, creator of the concept “hyperreality” would have loved it. At that moment, fiction and reality were closer to each other than never before – although it was apparently not the goal of the dystopic series. Bein...
Source: The Medical Futurist - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Bioethics Cyborgization Future of Medicine Medical Professionals Patients avatar BCI black mirror brain brain-computer interface death digital digital avatar digital health dystopia life memory sci-fi science fiction Source Type: blogs