Can't Blame Martha

The Uncanny Valley showcases the peculiar progression in the way humans see technology and how that slope changes as the non-living piece of technology becomes more and more human-like and realistic. There is a point in which this piece of technology becomes too much, it creeps most people out and makes for the uncomfortable question of, how realistic is too realistic? When do these robots stop amazing us and start challenging us as human beings?

These questions could clearly be depicted in the Black Mirror production "Be Right Back". A woman loses her husband in a sudden way leaving a void that she couldn't fill. Coping with the loss of her husband was harder on her when she found out she was pregnant and would have to raise a child without her husband Ash. The story seems to take place somewhere in the near future based on the technology and looks of it. This makes it evident that we are not far away from these commodities and the advances that "helped" her cope with the death of a loved one.  Martha, the main character, at first is hesitant to try this new app that would allow her to talk to her late husband, or an "online" version of him.The real Ash was gone, but like the rest of us, his online activity remained and was used to create an almost identical replica of the online him via text messaging and phone calls at first.

The app that allows her to communicate with this new version of Ash starts becoming a kind of addiction to Martha. She shuts off from all of her friends and family and only talks to the online version of Ash. Her inability to cope with his death drives her to try something even more unexpected. Martha finds a way to bring this online version of Ash into a physical and extremely realistic being. 

At first her amazement with this technology is far greater than anything else.Her strong feelings towards her husband and her longing for him make her be in a state of awe and has positive feelings towards this synthetic version of Ash. But just like the uncanny valley these feelings start sinking the more and more that she analyzes this new Ash. Yes he was extremely realistic and almost identical to the real Ash, who was undoubtedly dead, which was the problem. No matter how much the new Ash tried to please Martha he would never be the real Ash. All of his experiences and memories, the ones that were not on the web were gone. It was almost as if this was the carcass of Ash, an empty body with Facebook message and twitter post memory, nothing of his intimate life with Martha or his childhood were there. His imperfections, his quirks and other uniquely "Ash things" were all gone. This new Ash became too creepy, he was so similar to the real Ash, but he was also so different.

Martha could realize that this was a burden she could not get rid of, just like the pain of losing her husband, she could never get rid of Ash, the memory of him, and now this synthetic form of Ash.

For anyone that has lost someone very close to them they may have different reactions to what extent this became creepy, or how they would absolutely have a replica of their loved ones. We can only conclude that many other people going through similar situations as Martha may have a dead relative brought back to life with this technology. With that being said, the technology in the future could make these replicas even more similar to real people closing the gap between technology and human reality. 

Having this in perspective we can see how a lot of us would be a little weirded out about having people and realistic robot beings walk among us with out us even noticing the differences between real and synthetic life. But also what would you not do if you were to lose someone so close to you? Thinking about the situation Martha was in, pregnant and just having lost her husband is easy to see how this could have gotten out of hand so quickly, and how the pregnancy affected her decisions so much. The need to have someone to share that with and the support of a partner was so overwhelming that this was an easy escape out of it, or at least a temporary solution. Thinking about her circumstances I think a lot of people, whether they'd like to admit it or not would have fallen in the same steps as Martha.