Black Mirror and Philosophy: Dark Reflections

Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series

By: David Kyle Johnson - editor, William Irwin - editor

Narrated by: Emily Beresford, Joel Richards

Black Mirror - the Emmy-winning Netflix series that holds up a dark, digital mirror of speculative technologies to modern society-shows us a high-tech world where it is all too easy to fall victim to ever-evolving forms of social control. In Black Mirror and Philosophy, original essays written by a diverse group of scholars invite you to peer into the void and explore the philosophical, ethical, and existential dimensions of Charlie Brooker's sinister stories.

The collection reflects Black Mirror's anthology structure by pairing a chapter with every episode in the show's five seasons-including an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure analysis of Bandersnatch-and concludes with general essays that explore the series' broader themes. Chapters address questions about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, surveillance, privacy, love, death, criminal behavior, and politics, including: Have we given social media too much power over our lives? Could heaven really, one day, be a place on Earth? Should criminal justice and punishment be crowdsourced? What rights should a "cookie" have?

Immersive, engaging, and experimental, Black Mirror and Philosophy navigates the intellectual landscape of Brooker's morality plays for the modern world, where humanity's greatest innovations and darkest instincts collide.

©2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (P)2020 Tantor

Good book for various aspects of philosophy

The book does a good job of getting into various aspects of philosophy associated with Black Mirror. while parts of it may be a little bit of a reach from what the producers were actually thinking, the philosophy is very entertaining and thought provoking. Worth a listen.