Yesterday night, a couple of friends and I sat on the couch, and for a few seconds we looked at each other, speechless. Why? We watched a season of the fascinating series ‘Black Mirror’. As I only heard some vague stories about it, my expectations were quite shallow. This series is, as described by Internet Movie Database, ‘An anthology series exploring a twisted, high-tech world where humanity’s greatest innovations and darkest instincts collide.’ (IMDb.com, 2018) Trust me, a recommendation for all who are up for some wicked yet extremely thought-provoking piece of entertainment.
What if technology makes travelling in time not science fiction anymore? We all are aware of the fact that breaking through the cosmic speed limit and go faster than the speed of light is not realistic. Other possibilities such as using black holes, huge cylinders or cosmic strings to play with the fabric of space-time are not a likely option too. At least, not any time soon. But, what would happen to society if we are actually able to re-do time by using technology? Re-see what a person has gone through, can be that day, week, month, or even years ago. Literally looking through somebody else’s eyes and rewind what happened. As science has been extremely powerful in explaining the quite unexplainable, it is very interesting to think about how technology can be of further use in doing so.
What would this imply for security these days? If such thing actually gets realized, would it truly be beneficial for humanity or do we lose any sense of privacy? Enough spoiling, please put your thoughts out here. Also, a little off topic perhaps, but what if we could bring back modern technology 30 years and hand it over to a tech company, could they reverse engineer it and duplicate it? Anyways, if you have watched Black Mirror or are up for a cup of coffee to talk about this matter, I am curious to hear what you got to say!
Very interesting read!
It would be astonishing should humans be able to achieve this. However, I am sure that this technology would quickly be forbidden by the government. Apart from invading privacy which is probably reason enough to restrict it, individuals could achieve huge gains at the expense of other people. For example, imagine two companies who are rivals. With this technology, company A’s CEO could just travel back in time and oversee all the decisions the CEO at company B made and have the chance to see confidential documents. This would lead to unfair competition. Ultimately, this can happen in many other fields as well. Conclusively, the world as we built it, would change drastically, but not in a good way. Peoples’ outrages would be tremendous and institutions would have to respond to that.
Thank you for your comment Fabian! I agree with you, the privacy and security downsides of such technology enabled applications do not outplay the benefits at the moment. At first, it is extremely likely that governments forbid it. However, if you think about it the other way around, police or investigation teams as such could be much helped. Identifying if a suspect is truly guilty or not becomes much easier. Also, in supply chain management or HR, applications that enable going back in time and show what a product or person have gone through could be beneficial. For now, I believe that people, institutions (including current rules and regulations) and society as a whole is not ready. Yet, I do not exclude the possibility of such a thing from happening in the future.
Hi Carly, I am happy that you started about Black Mirror! It’s a thought provoking source that should definitely be mentioned in this series of blogs about the impact of information technologies.
I personally believe that Black Mirror is doing a great job in showing a realistic worst case scenario of the impact of technologies such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality or the impact of Social Media. They show us how you could be living in a game without being aware that you are in the game (VR), or constantly see your greatest nightmare, like huge spiders (AR). Or your access to an airport could be rejected based on your Social Media rating. These are all things that are already possible, or will be possible soon.
I personally believe that we, as academic students who can influence the use and development of new technologies in our careers, have a great responsibility in managing the risks that these new technologies bring. To do this, we should focus on the qualities of people that machines will never have: empathy, emotional intelligence, persuasion, moral, etc. If we use these qualities ourselves and respect these qualities of others, than we will never put people in games without them being aware of it. Then we will never show someone their greatest nightmare and most importantly, never judge a person on their social media rating, but only on actual human interactions.
Thanks Luuk, your comment is appreciated! The scenarios that you point out are of great importance, if not for now than indeed soon enough they will be somewhere in the future. Personally, I believe that human qualities are needed in managing the outputs systems and/or machines are giving us. A person can have social media ratings that aren’t ‘up to standard’, but how should we treat such a person? The outcome a system would give us is likely to be a boolean one, access granted versus no access granted. However, the information that we already have and will have in the future should be used in a humane way, meaning that people should be able to deviate from what the system indicates and grant a person access when initially no access would be granted.
VR, AR, Social Media and machine learning too is created and of use by humans. In principle, these new possibilities should be used for the better instead of letting it get a hold of us in a negative way. So, I totally agree with you in that sense knowing that many challenges lie ahead of us as well.