I recently watched the interactive film released under the Black Mirror umbrella titled Bandersnatch. At the risk of exposing the plot and possibly spoiling it for a reader, all I will say is that the very concept of the film is the plot itself (to a certain extent). You make decisions for a character, and the main character throughout the film will begin to feel that somebody is controlling him, something of a greater force.

While some viewers may go along and realize that this is the essential plot line that Black Mirror has come to perfect, some viewers may realize that they stepped into an even higher level of complexity as the plot thickens into a paradox. You, as the watcher, are controlling the decisions for the main character which ultimately “creates” a plot line for the rest of the movie, the plot actually comes to involve you, quite literally as the antagonist of the entire film. The cherry on top in my opinion, is that most people don’t even realize this, consumed by the aura of film and technology, that it is a little bit mind boggling. This, in my opinion, is what Black Mirror truly sets out to shed light on. The fact that we as a society are watching these things happen (and sometimes even conducting the act ourselves), and not knowing it at all.

The Verge recently wrote an article about the film, outlining how the film also takes marketing and data collection to a new level. Now that the film has seen strings of success, the media company predicted that many others will follow suit, attempting to create interactive films in the near future. Will this be the new rush of a few years ago, when 3D movies started to saturate the silver screens, and wearing funky looking glasses in a theater became a norm? The difference here is, you can sit right on your couch and do this.

It seems as this is again, is climbing yet another layer above what Black Mirror sheds a light on. We are constantly, willingly handing over data that then gets recycled to “suit our needs” best. Yet, most of us don’t even know that it is happening. Look at the shit storm that Facebook is currently trying to survive (and doing horribly at it) after billions of people willingly gave up their data. We seem to not understand consequences before a disaster or catastrophic incident happens, yet if you were to show somebody video footage of the first time they signed up for Facebook, I’m absolutely sure that 99% of the people didn’t bother to check the terms and conditions (myself included). And now we bitch.

I’m not defending Facebook or Netflix by any means for utilizing data to further capital agendas. This is how companies will thrive and continue to grow these days, especially when pressured by board members and investors to make a return on their money. However, I am merely calling out the public (again, myself included) to be a bit more conscious about how we look at data. I believe that in the future, data could be as valuable as currency, if not more. Cryptocurrency is not far from being “data as currency.”

Data can become a dangerous weapon particularly because it allows one to peer into the workings of our brain, without ever talking to us. There’s a ton that one could analyze by having a conversation with one another, however when it comes to decision making, this is what makes data so dangerous. Every click, every second hovered on an image, every digital “friend” or “idol” that we acquire, all comes together on canvas to paint a perfect picture of who you may be as a human on a psychological level. This, is what makes the data collection problems currently so intimidating. Yet it seems that a lot of people still don’t fully understand the far reaching consequences.

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