Black Mirror: the dark reflection of the information society

Abstract

This article analyzes the content of the six episodes released from the British mini-series Black Mirror. This series examines, from a sociological perspective, the influence of current technology in the society, projecting their present implications into the future. The analysis of the images and ideas of Black Mirror offers a dystopian vision of the contemporary use of the technological development, presenting a society immersed in a process of virtualization in which reality is consumed as spectacle. The society offered in Black Mirror represents a metaphor of the current society, exploring the potential changes in communication, sociability and morality. The ideas reflected in Black Mirror are, on the other hand, coincident with the thought expressed by authors such as Baudrillard, Žižek, Castells or Sartori, who analyzed the social and cultural changes that the use of new technologies are producing in the present and those that may take place in the future.