The world has changed significantly since the release of the first Black Mirror episode in 2011. After a break spanning multiple years, it was confirmed in 2022, that a new season of the critically-acclaimed Netflix show is finally in the making.
While we wait to see what the show will have to say about current technological developments, I’ve been keeping busy re-watching old episodes to see what Black Mirror got right and wrong about the future of technology.
Most episodes have a very dark undertone. Once in a while, however, a storyline is more optimistic. This is also the case for “San Junipero,” one of my favorite episodes ever released. It’s often regarded as one of the lighter episodes of the show.
But is it, really? Or is there something sinister underneath the surface after all?
What Did Black Mirror Get Right About the Future?
Black Mirror has a track record of showing us eerily accurate glimpses into the future of technology.
From VR systems that allow you to have sex and our societal obsession with social media ranking, to rogue A.I. bots and actual memory implants—the show has touched upon many pain points that are not entirely unrealistic.
Black Mirror has been praised for its social commentary and suggestions that technology will likely do more harm than good if we’re not careful. The “San Junipero” episode, however, seems to suggest the opposite: maybe technology can actually make our lives better.
Though, this also depends entirely on your definition of life.
Are we living in a simulation?
How do we know that the world around us is real? It’s a question that’s been on my mind since reading the excellent, literary sci-fi novel Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. If you’ve ever heard of the simulation hypothesis, you know what I’m getting at: what if our reality is really just a computer simulation?
“San Junipero” is an episode that adjacently plays with this idea. In the episode, a type of technology has been invented that lets people upload their consciousness to the cloud in order to live in a simulated version of the afterlife. One that’s designed so realistically that it’s indistinguishable from reality.
Ever since watching the episode for the first time, I’ve been wondering how this might work. Would it be possible to simulate reality in this way? Should we start considering this when we’re making plans for our digital legacy?
Maybe we can continue to live after we die, spending our days in a perfectly simulated beach town that feels exactly like real life. Or, to take things to a different extreme, perhaps our own reality already is a type of simulation.
Black Mirror: San Junipero – Season 3, Episode 4
“San Junipero” is the fourth episode of Black Mirror’s third season. It was written by Charlie Brooker and directed by Owen Harris. Along with the rest of series three, the episode was released on 21 October 2016.
SPOILERS:
What follows has spoilers for the entire episode.
San Junipero is a coastal beach town in California, where we meet the two main characters of the episode: shy and introverted Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis), and outgoing Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw).
At the start of the episode, we don’t yet know that San Junipero is really a computer-generated simulation of the afterlife where people can achieve a kind of digital immortality. If you opt into the technology of San Junipero, your mind will be uploaded to the cloud which you can visit, either temporarily (to try out the simulation) or permanently (once you pass away).
Both women are near death in the real world. In San Junipero, however, they have the option to spend eternal life together, in love, as younger versions of themselves. As it turns out, the simulation lets you live in a time period of your choice, without any pain or suffering.
While Yorkie wishes to be euthanized and stay in the digital afterlife of San Junipero permanently, Kelly has more reservations. As the two fall more deeply in love, a key question is raised: can a digital, simulated life ever be as good as the real thing?
Can Your Mind Live Forever After Your Body Dies?
People have always been interested in immortality. While medical advancements to prolong people’s lifespans have generally been expected to improve, the rise of technology, more specifically A.I. technology, has changed the playing field, too. Instead of physical immortality, what if there’s another way? What if we can preserve ourselves digitally?
On the surface, uploading our consciousness to a digital system seems very far-fetched. Moreover, even if we were to manage—how could we ever design a simulation that mimics our reality perfectly?
Still, a surprising amount of progress is being made on both fronts. When it comes to creating a digital copy of our consciousness, a mind copy, if you will, researchers at Samsung and Harvard University are already working on mapping a neurological connection map onto a memory chip.
Of course, the world of virtual reality (and, by extension, simulations) is booming, too. Epic Games’ excellent graphics engine Unreal Engine 5 has been designing very realistic VR environments. And while haptic technology is not yet able to create fully immersive experiences, it’s seeing major investment.
Still, we’re a world away from the simulation depicted in San Junipero. Let’s take a look at where we’re at.
Science Fact or Science Fiction: How Real Is San Junipero?
For each episode in this blog series, I use a Science Fact to Science Fiction scale to determine how realistic the Black Mirror episodes are. For “San Junipero,” I’m looking into the following topics:
- Immersive simulations
- Digital consciousness
- Simulation hypothesis
How Would San Junipero Work? Immersive Simulations
First, let’s take a good look at how the world of San Junipero really works. In the real world, people can enter the simulation by using a small neural interface that they place on their temple. The connection to the simulation can be controlled with a handheld controller.
We don’t get much more insight into the technology, except at the end of the episode, when we see that the simulation is housed on a huge server wall. Once a person decides to spend eternal life in San Junipero, their consciousness is transferred into this server.
Inside the San Junipero simulation, people can basically do whatever they want: dance, drive around, and have sex, much like a fun VR game. It’s possible to change the time period of the town, as well as change outfits in an instant. Everything is shiny, sunny, and perfect, with one exception.
Out of town, a nightclub called the Quagmire shows the darker side of the simulation. It’s an inverse of the main beach town, a shadow place that suggests that not everything in the digital afterlife remains beautiful. After all: if you have access to eternity, doesn’t everything eventually lose meaning?
There are two things to look at. One, could we create a place like San Junipero? And two, would we want to? We’ll get back to the second question later.
First, let’s look at the closest approximation we have to simulated reality: VR.
Virtual reality and simulations
At first glance, San Junipero seems to come close to what we know as virtual reality.
Just like in VR as we know it, there’s a degree of control that users have over the San Junipero simulation. For example, you can adjust your pain sliders to the extent that you feel nothing if you get hurt. It’s also possible to “red light” another user in San Junipero, which resembles blocking someone in a virtual world.
In terms of hardware, the closest thing we have to what’s shown on Black Mirror is VR headsets like the Meta Quest 2. However, the Meta Quest 2 is not nearly as immersive as what we see in “San Junipero.” It’s very challenging to simulate real feelings, even when touch can be enhanced by haptic equipment.
Another key difference is that, with VR, your body remains rooted in the real world and is part of the experience. By contrast, in San Junipero, a digitalized version of your consciousness is the only thing attached to the simulation. This is a clear diversion from VR, and one we’re not close to developing.
Though, that’s not to say that people aren’t interested.
Digital Consciousness: Uploading Your Brain
How would you transfer someone’s consciousness into a digital realm? While it might seem a far way off, experts are convinced that mind-uploading will really happen one day, perhaps even in our lifetime.
Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that humans are going to become increasingly non-biological. He also suggests that having a machine-based existence in a virtual world is very likely.
There are two obstacles, though. The first one, it seems, is processing power. The human brain has billions of neurons. We’d need to be able to design mind-uploading technology capable of processing this data and then simulating it.
But more importantly, we’d need a device that’s capable of transferring who we are to a computer, our actual consciousness, including memories, perception, and awareness—what some might call our soul. This is what the field of connectomics concerns itself with. Mapping the connections between neurons in order to simulate a person’s memories and personality digitally.
Writing for the MIT Technology Review, Michael Hendricks states that simply mapping neurons is not enough for actual simulation. Moreover, we simply don’t understand enough of our brain yet to be able to figure out if an uploaded consciousness would really be us.
Essentially, no one really knows what makes us conscious. It’s near impossible to measure or observe. We only know we’re conscious because we experience it. Moreover, Hendricks warns against oversimplifying the relationship between the brain and the body. It’s not exclusively a matter of copying consciousness, but also where this consciousness can or can’t go.
Finally, even if we were to succeed with advanced enough technology to upload someone’s consciousness, should we want to? Personally, this is something I’m concerned with. Do I want to sign over the rights to my consciousness to a private company? Do I want to live forever in a simulation and will I be safe, let’s say, from a hacker attack?
This brings us to what is perhaps the most interesting suggestion of San Junipero: what if a simulation is so well-designed, we would forget it was a simulation?
A Truly Realistic Simulation: Are We Already in One?
Let’s discuss a fun little idea to leave you wondering.
The simulation hypothesis is based on the idea that probability dictates that we’re already living in a simulation. In other words, it suggests that it is more likely that we are living in a simulation than that we’re not.
Within our universe, there are innumerable habitable planets, making the odds of other civilizations extremely high. In the most simplified version of the simulation hypothesis, the chances of these civilizations being more technologically advanced than us are also very high. And if our simulation technology is already so rapidly improving, it’s highly likely these advanced civilizations have already cracked the code.
The simulation hypothesis was popularized by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003, in a paper titled “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” In it, Bostrom outlined that, given the way we’re drawn to simulating reality, it’s likely other technological societies would do the same thing.
While the simulation theory has received a lot of criticism, too—the main one being that probability still doesn’t actually prove that we are currently living in a simulation—it does increase the likelihood that, if not us, some civilization somewhere, most likely has developed the exact simulation that San Junipero is built on. Though, we’re not able to prove it (yet!).
Maybe once we develop the right tech and ensure we can protect it and its users from cybercrime, too, we’ll be able to develop something similar to San Junipero.
So, What’s the Verdict?
San Junipero is an interesting episode, one that’s more on the science fiction side of things than other Black Mirror episodes. Still, it seems like we’re progressing into a future where certain elements of the episode might become reality.
In the first place, there’s an enormous investment in VR and simulated reality. While easier said than done, we’ll likely continue to develop evermore realistic and immersive virtual worlds in the coming decades.
The step to simulation on the basis of our consciousness, as done in San Junipero, is more complicated. There’s the issue of processing. But also, we can’t easily separate our consciousness from our bodies. Moreover, even if we were able to upload our minds digitally, it’s unclear whether the copy will really be us.
Finally, San Junipero makes us wonder about the simulation hypothesis. How likely is it that we’re already living in a simulation? What if everything we touch and feel and think is actually computer-generated, and we’re living in a type of San Junipero without being aware of it?
While impossible to prove (at this point!), it’s certainly an idea that will keep me wondering for a while.
What do you think? Are we living in a simulation? Leave us a comment with your thoughts!
