{"id":4381,"date":"2016-03-27T14:01:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-27T08:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4381"},"modified":"2016-03-27T14:01:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-27T08:31:00","slug":"from-the-jetsons-to-black-mirror-when-did-the-future-go-from-utopia-to-dystopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/?p=4381","title":{"rendered":"From the Jetsons to Black Mirror: When Did the Future Go from Utopia to Dystopia?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

N<\/span>ow that we\u2019re all grown up, we divide ourselves along many lines: bhakt or librandu, chai or coffee, <\/p>Mumbai or Delhi<\/span><\/a>. But back in the \u201990s, we first learned to wage these wars on Cartoon Network. If you were the nostalgic, dinosaur-obsessed type, you were into <\/span>The Flintstones<\/span><\/i> \u2014 which, with its foot-powered cars and woolly mammoth showers, made for a solid half-hour of entertainment. For the more forward-thinking eight-year-olds, however, there was <\/span>The Jetsons<\/span><\/i>. While the show actually ran through the \u201980s, reruns were ubiquitous even in the early noughties. <\/span>\n\nIf the Flintstones gave us a glimpse into the prehistoric past, the Jetsons showed us what life could someday be. For a generation that lived in fear of the devastating Y2K bug shutting down the internet, or mom finding our MSN Messenger chats on the family computer, we already dreamed of a digital future every day. <\/span>Technology was progressing<\/span><\/a> faster than ever before, and we became accustomed to our constantly changing reality. Where would the boundaries of this brave new world be pushed by the time we were grown up?<\/span>\n\nObviously, the answer lay with the Jetsons \u2014 a typical, 20th-century nuclear family who happened to have flying cars and a mechanical maid called Rosie the Robot. Dad George Jetson goes off to work each day at the office, while mom Jane is a <\/span>devoted housewife<\/span><\/a> who is part of a women\u2019s club; daughter Judy is a teenage girl who only cares about writing in her secret digital diary and talking on her <\/span>hi-tech phone<\/span><\/a>; and son Elroy is a scientific prodigy. (Plus, Jane was only 18 on the show when she had the couple\u2019s first child, while George was 25 \u2014 an age gap that we now consider barely legal and fairly creepy.)<\/span>\n\nClearly, the Jetsons were only a model of progress on the surface. They fed us the same old stories, complete with a patriarchal family and plenty of sexist stereotypes, that we\u2019d seen a thousand times before. Perhaps that\u2019s why their future was so easy to envision as our own: All the cool, futuristic tech was just window dressing for a familiar world. <\/span>\n\nSo it was a revelation when we grew up and realised technology has a far greater impact on our lives than the Jetsons told us. The future is here, and turns out, it\u2019s a lot scarier than Rosie the kindly Robot Maid. Instead, we have to deal with the very immediate prospect of robots <\/span>taking our jobs<\/span><\/a>, and inevitably, <\/span>the world<\/span><\/a>. We imagine how the lines between person and machine will blur thanks to super lifelike humanoid bots, who look and sound just like us. And on top of that, we have to worry about whether (perish the thought!) they\u2019re smarter than us.<\/span>\n

All the cool, futuristic tech was just window dressing for a familiar world.\nSo it was a revelation when we grew up and realised technology has a far greater impact on our lives than the Jetsons told us.<\/blockquote>\nNo wonder our approach to technology in pop culture has swung from the unremarkable Jetsons on ordinary television, to web series like <\/span>Black Mirror<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span>Mr Robot<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Altered Carbon<\/span><\/i> \u2014 or <\/span>A.I.SHA<\/span><\/a><\/em>, about a self-learning artificial intelligence assistant. Now in its third season, the show revolves around the titular robot A.I.SHA, who falls in love with her creator, and is determined to trap him by any means necessary. A.I.SHA has his girlfriend killed, hacks into networks to spy on him, and mines data to use against him. When you consider how Judy Jetson spent all her time chasing boys, A.I.SHA\u2019s subversion of the trope into an omniscient, obsessive stalker would be hilarious if it weren\u2019t so scary. Just like the specsy, nerdy hacker who featured in ensemble comedies morphed into the shadowy activist with a personality disorder in <\/span>Mr Robot<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>\n\nOf course, unlike the Jetsons, <\/span>A.I.SHA <\/span><\/i>and<\/span> Mr Robot <\/span><\/i>are definitely not recommended for children. But the differences go beyond the intended age group of viewers. The rose-tinted, regressive portrayals on the Jetsons would never fly even in a kids\u2019 cartoon today \u2014 and my younger cousins are a hell of a lot more pessimistic about The Future than I ever was. The issues we see on <\/span>Black Mirror<\/span><\/i> \u2014 of a digital surveillance dystopia, how social media can bend reality, and most recently, creating your own algorithm based on choices \u2014 are no longer theoretical. And the Jetsons will never be more than a relic of how a naive, primitive society taught kids about the 21st century. <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last two decades, our approach to technology in pop culture has swung from the unremarkable Jetsons to dystopian web series like Black Mirror or A.I.SHA. What changed? At some point, we had to deal with the very immediate prospect of robots taking our jobs, and inevitably, the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":4382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[5087,7679,4113,7795,7300,1508,7796,7797,7750,7798,1341,7765,4122,7514],"class_list":["post-4381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-aisha","tag-aisha-my-virtual-girlfriend","tag-altered-carbon","tag-aritificial-intelligence","tag-bandersnatch","tag-black-mirror","tag-flintstones","tag-jetsons","tag-made-in-heaven","tag-mr-robot","tag-netflix","tag-robots","tag-science-fiction","tag-webseries"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom the Jetsons to Black Mirror: When Did the Future Go from Utopia to Dystopia?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the last two decades, our approach to technology in pop culture has swung from the unremarkable Jetsons to dystopian web series like Black Mirror or A.I.SHA. 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What changed? 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