Comment by Barrin92

>It is an inherently populist narrative, one that appeals to nostalgia

I don't agree with this or the article at all. There's very little nostalgia, if any, in Black Mirror. (nostalgia being a desire to return to the past, or romantic display of the past). The show is very firmly centered on present day or future abuse of technology, that much is true, but there's nothing wrong or inaccurate about that.

The article just does what is common but wrong, fetishize technology, that is to claim that technology itself makes the world better. But that is to attribute agency to something that has no agency. We're not better off than the past because of technology, but because of ethical progress. Technology is a lever. It as easily makes you a virus as it can make you a cure.

Give modern technology to a dictator and you get the most total surveillance state on earth. Black Mirror makes an accurate observation, that technological progress is outrunning our ethical progress. Insofar pessimism is justified. When you're at the mercy of at best idiots and at worst despots not handing them bigger levers is not nostalgia but just means you have a healthy survival instinct.