Black Mirror & Self-Identity
Black Mirror and Self-identity
Black Mirror and Self-identity
PSA and Warning:
Warning: this episode of Life and Lore contains spoilers to Black Mirror Seasons 1-5.
Life and Lore also contains adult content. If these audio files ever penetrate through the 20 feet thick walls of our beautiful, glorious, spectacular bunker, then please be advised.
Episode References: Striking Vipers, White Christmas, Hang the DJ, San Junipero, and Black Museum
Cookies: A Digital Reference of the human consciousness (black mirror wiki, 2020).
Interesting suggestion about cookies: legal status of cookies has been shown in various episodes in the series. They’re used for criminal investigations.
Timeline of the Cookie
Original of the Cookie:
A Diagnostic Symphasizer was used by Dr. Dawson in the episode “Black Museum”. The doctor was connected to the patients to further understand their pain and what they were feeling in order to cure them and operate on them effectively. When he started connecting to them when they died, the cookie went haywire by sending that rush of chemicals and euphoria of the experience of death into the doctors connected cookie. This led to a lo-fi method of consciousness transference that is displayed in Black Museum. This lo-fi version of the cookie allowed someone’s mind to be transferred into another person or into an inanimate object in a stuffed animal that had optical sensors for the cookie to monitor and experience an eternity of life, or until the termination of the cookie (which was later banned by the UN).
That form of consciousness in an inanimate object seems tortuous by all means and also led to other forms of psychological terror and rehabilitation.
Cookie “Rights” displaying consciousness:
The UN implemented stricter controls on digitally replicating consciousness, stating that a cookie has to display at least 5 emotions for its existence to be considered “humane”. There’s the lo-fi system of symphasizers and the hi-fi version exemplified in the San Junipero episode. That also opens a flood gate of questions like if you can duplicate yourself and if the cookie never dies and becomes self-aware, then are all the cookie copies in San Junipero just intimate copies and clones of the original consciousness that have found immortality? Is their programming and transformation into binary codes and programming the answer to higher consciousness and the true afterlife?
As I watched the episodes and saw the evolution of the cookie technology and how immersive the experience is, I started to wonder if that person’s soul is actually being transferred versus just the copy of a person.
White Christmas
A device under the clients head by the brain and kept in there for a week, giving it time to accurately replicate the individuals consciousness. It’s then removed once it programs itself to think, behave, and become self-aware. In one of the flashbacks, a client has a cookie replicate her consciousness through a private company called “Smartintelligence’ IN ORDER for the cookie to run her automated smart house. However, when Matt Trent, played by Jon Hamm (the b0y), then conditions the cookie via psychological tort via increased time perception in order to break it and force the cookie to comply. Tough shit there.
I’m sure the cookies dont actually feel pain and are, in a sense, immortal since they dont feel the effects of aging. This renders psych terrorism and torture in order to condition the cooke to submit to the hosts needs. Since they lack the need for nourishment and any sensations of pain and physical suffering (through disease, aging, self mutilation, etc) then what are the defining 5 or more emotions that the fictional UN are basing their judgement on?
I’m thinking they’re any emotion on the spectrum like sad, happy, excited, curiosity, all the aspects of basic emotions even a baby can display. This raises my question to us in the bunker.
In our time in the bunker and doing our best to survive off of my failed supply runs, what moments have felt like a “play test” to you or an experience similar to the episode “hang the DJ” where we’re experiencing a test through a copy of our true-selves in order for our host to know what choices to make in this simulated bunker.
Black Mirror Wiki. “Cookie”. Black-mirror wiki. https://black-mirror.fandom.com/wiki/Cookie (accessed August 3, 2020)
Stephanie Dube Dwilson. “Black Mirror: Digital Clones vs. Digital Consciousness, Wha’s the Difference?”. Heavy. https://heavy.com/entertainment/2017/12/black-mirror-digital-clones-vs-conciousness-difference/ (accessed August 3, 2020)
