Kate Honeyman

Professor Collins
10/16/15
There Is More To People Than Their Social Media Posts
The Black Mirror episode Be Right Back looks at an example of posthumanism where people are replaced by technology. They take our technological
selves, which is how people see us online, through social media, and expand it to
include a cyborg, a technologically modified body. This cyborg is meant to be like a
real person, but he ends up being like a robot. We cannot completely replace people
with technology, because technology takes away the emotional aspects of people,
and without emotions, people wouldnt be people.
In Be Right Back, the main character, Ash, dies, and Martha attempts to
bring him back, first through her computer. Her friend sends her something that
causes her computer to create a virtual self of Ash. Then she loses Ashs virtual
self. All she did was drop her phone, but she acts like she lost someone. We are so
consumed by technology that we treat our virtual selves as if they were real
people. We seem to value virtual self over human self, and this is why we try to
replace people with technology. We value whats replaceable over whats
irreplaceable. Martha has a stronger reaction when she loses virtual Ash than when
she loses human Ash. She could buy a new phone and replace virtual Ash on there,
but she could never truly replace human Ash, even though she tries to.
http://sac.sagepub.com.libproxy.csun.edu/content/18/3/230.full.pdf+html

When she loses virtual Ash, she takes it to the next step and buys a body,
and modifies the body in order to be like Ash. She tries to take human qualities and
make them virtual, which is impossible. A big part of human personalities is
emotions, and anything virtual, even a cyborg or robot, cannot comprehend
emotions. We see this with Ash, as he has no natural reactions and can only react
by what he knows, which are his memories. Martha gets into a fight with him, and
she tells him to hit her. He doesnt know how to react, since he has no memories of
Ash hitting Martha. He also has to be told by Martha to cry; he cannot create his
own emotions; he does not know what emotions are, because he is technology and
technology does not know emotions. Martha also tells him to jump off of a cliff, but
he cannot do that either, because he has no memory of Ash jumping off of a cliff. He
also cannot jump because he cannot go more than 25 feet away from Martha; he
has to stay with Martha. Martha tells him to leave the house earlier on, and he just
stands in the front yard, because he has to stay within the 25 foot radius.
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110426072313/marvel_dc/images/c/c9/Victor_
Stone_SBG.png
We have a similar view when it comes to technology, because if we go too far
away from technology, we feel like we are going out of bounds. The biggest

example is our phones. We always have to have our phones on us, and we panic if
our phones are suddenly missing. We also need other technology in our lives. We
constantly use computers and watch TV, as well as use our phones. Going for a day
without any of these seems impossible. We have our own mental radius of possible
distance between ourselves and technology. We feel that we cannot leave this area,
that we are confined to this area by technology.
We are different people in real life than we are online, and this is because we
can hold more memories than a computer can. We have an infinite amount of space
in our brains to hold memories, and we could remember every event that has
happened to us and every fact that we have ever learned, if we really wanted to,
but most of us dont, because we prioritize certain events and facts over others.
Computers only know what we tell them, and we restrict our thoughts even more
when we are on social media. We dont talk about every single event that goes on in
our lives on social media, so when people look at our virtual selves, they only get
a limited view of our lives. They know about all of the fun events that we have been
to, by looking at our posts about them, but they likely dont know what we do in our
everyday lives, and what we do in our everyday lives is essential to who we are as
people. The classes that we take show our educational interests. The food that we
buy from the grocery store shows our taste perfrences and could also show how
busy we are, buying a lot of fresh ingredients could mean that we have a lot of free
time to cook, or that we really love cooking, and buying a lot of frozen microwave
food could mean that we are so busy with work and/or school that we dont have
time to cook, or maybe not even to sit down and eat. What we do in our free time at
home defines who we are as people too. It shows our interests, and by knowing our
interests, people get to know us better. Although people know some of our interests
from looking at our social media profiles, our social media profiles dont tell them
everything. They know that we enjoy the beach or that we enjoy concerts because
we post pictures of ourselves there, but they dont know what TV shows we like or
what books we read by looking at those posts, and these interests define us too.
People dont know enough about the real us just by looking at social media.
http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120302011560/marvel_dc/images/f/f2/Cybor
g_0007.jpg
Humans are not replaceable by cyborgs. We have qualities, such as emotion
and personality, that show who we are, and we lose this unique part of ourselves
through technology. Someone looking at your social media accounts does not know
your emotional state just by looking online, and therefore dont know how you feel
about the situations that you post about, which is important. If we were replaced by
cyborgs, we would no longer have any emotions, and so we wouldnt react to
situations like we normally would. Some people think that it would be a great idea to
replace humans with technology, but it would make everything worse, as we would
lose all of the interesting qualities that we have as humans.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6c/Cyberion2.png