For this week’s Flora Friday Films, we had watched a Black Mirror episode revolving around a dystopian society where everyone has a ‘grain’–a device inside them that allows them to record everything that they see, hear, and experience. Not only that, but this device also allows them to play everything they experience back to them.

An interesting question Ty posed before we began the movie was “would you guys like to have this device?” For me personally, I suppose it wouldn’t be terrible to have such a technology, but I don’t want it to record every aspect of my life at every moment. What happened in the Black Mirror episode was that the main protagonist got obsessed with playing things back to himself, which led him to finding out about his wife’s ex and past lover, and throughout the episode he was very tormented by his wife’s past. Having this sort of device into existence would definitely facilitate this kind of obsession, I think. Memory is a really powerful thing, and having that device and the power to replay our memories exactly as it was made can be dangerous. With that device, we could potentially play back every embarrassing moment, every regret, every moment in our lives we would rather not have to relive. Even though we don’t want to relive those moments, we would play it back to ourselves, because that’s just how some people are–some people ruminate over small things and get really distressed over it–as we all saw with the protagonist in the episode.

But still, I can see the benefits of having this device. Imagine if we could record lectures and play them back, for example. I definitely wouldn’t mind having a more convenient version of a cellphone camera/recorder. I think one big thing is that I would like to have control over what I record. Not just everything I see, as demonstrated in the episode.