Technology and Social Media

Be Right Back is both a haunting vision of the future, and of what our relationship with technology could become. It is also a reminder of how our relationship with technology has changed since the mid-twentieth century. Martha soon finds that this technology gives her some comfort in dealing with her loss, but simultaneously imprisons her in a pale imitation of her old life. She lives a lie, failing to admit her true situation to her friends and family, and unable to move on from her loss which however painful, she must do. The technology that facilitates this entrapment only creates a hollow set of lies, imitating only the public person that Ash was willing to display on social media sites. What is left is a handful of witty comments, starved of intimacy, actual feeling or anything of any meaning. First of all this serves as a powerful reminder to the soullessness of social media. All of which point to something, which aren’t themselves something. This is fine, social media does not need to be a pool of pathos or raw emotion. But it can’t and shouldn’t be a substitute for actual relationships or human interactions, it can never replace them. Technology can bridge many gaps, but it cannot bridge the gap for personal intimacy or friendship. This brings the conflict of digital self vs real self. If someone is a different person online than their real life, one wouldn’t be able to replicate the same person. Loss and the way we cope when our lives are increasingly immortalized through our use of the internet and social media. Apart from its technological concerns, one common theme in Be Right Back is the idea of getting what you want. But at its most essential core, grief is just another want: You want that person to be alive again. Not in a practical, literal way, but that is what your brain is grappling with: the absence of a thing — in this case a person — that you love. But more importantly and profoundly it underlies the conservatism that underlies both our society's’ relationship with and vision for technology and also our fears about its worst excesses. Have you ever lost someone close to you? I think Martha was trying to get as much of "Ash" as possible, and got frustrated because the little things reminded her that it wasn't actually him. Even though Ash 2 looked and could tell a few jokes and things that sounded like Ash 1, she knew that no one, not not even Ash 2 would ever be able to replace the real Ash not matter how advanced technology gets.