Black Mirror Reflections & Research/ 3 articles

After watching part of the Black mirror reflections, I gathered that a lot of the "fictional future" is the "actual present" because you see a lot of technology starting to take over. For instance, you see a lot of phone usage, people are being rated and names are being seen in real time, and computer technology is digital and touch screens. Alot of the technology is self-controlled like I am today's time. The phone updates throughout were interesting. I say this because in today's actual present we are considered "Rated" by our socials. People engage in our content. I look at this as a rating because people will like your post and tend to engage if they find something that you are doing interesting. 

Interactive Billboards are interesting. One part of the show showed the guy pulling everyone up on the web. This is related to the actual present because you can do that in today's time. The face-time call is very present. We often FaceTime now in today's time. The electric car reminds me a lot of Tesla. 

• What does it mean? This is a sign of change being seen in the world. Technology is steadily improving, and I am sure that we will see more of these inventions becoming true. 

• What will you think or do differently? That digitally based off the things that were going on in the episode could cause people to lose themselves in this world. It is already bad enough that some people are still trying to find themselves in the world but adding on to the idea of a "rating" people could be a lot on a person causing them to lose themselves to please others. So, if I were to do something differently, I would change that.  

• How do you feel about this information in relation to your current project of Personal Branding your social media? I find it interesting that as a person you are still being judged on how you brand yourself. It may not be digitally as the movie through phones, but people are always watching and looking at you to judge. Sometimes in an effective way or bad way.  

3 Articles  

After reading the first article titled “Inside China’s vast new experiment in social ranking” started to remind me of Apple pay. Automatically that is the first thing that I thought about when I read the part of the text that stated “Everyone paid for everything with their phones. At McDonald’s, the convenience store, even at mom-and-pop restaurants, his friends in Shanghai used mobile payment.” Relating to Alipay and WeChat Pay, they are like the present time of Apple pay. I just remembered setting up an apple account. I had to show my full name, Social Security number, birthday, home address, etc. Furthermore, after reading “Real life black mirror: China's moves to introduce scorecards that rank the behavior of citizens” raised me to have a few questions. First, how is people's privacy being controlled and to what extent of information is being told? Secondly, how might people's behaviors start to change to make others happy in a good or bad way? Lastly, referring to the article “China turns black mirror real by ranking citizens on social credit systems.” It relates to today's present. In the article it states, “something much similar to the bizarre concept shown in Nosedive where your social media rank is evaluated based on likes and ratings.” I think a lot of people in today's time are ranked by their social status. How they dress, what they are branding, their income, their overall content, and status.