
Humanity has been progressing technologically at an exponential rate, creating new conveniences and devices that are inconceivable to past generations.  With such a rapid advance in technology, the people born today will most likely grow up in a very different world than what exists right now.  The future holds an infinite number of possibilities, and most science fiction writers take advantage of that to write their own personal predictions of what the future holds.  Each of these predictions are based on different cultural aspects of the times when they were written.  “San Junipero,” an episode of the show Black Mirror, details a future where a digital afterlife exists; a prediction based on the growing amount of non-religious people and the consequences of an increase in technologically dependent populus.    

In a world of growing convenience, most science fiction that isn’t depicting a dystopian future is depicting one where some kind of device makes everyday life more simple for everyone.  For example, in the Black Mirror episode titled “The Entire History of You,”  almost everyone has a device called a “grain” which is implanted behind their ear and allows them to re-play memories either privately through their own eyes or publically on a television screen.  “San Junipero” has a similarly convenient device, one which is placed behind the ear as opposed to implanted, that allows the user to have their conscience digitized and downloaded to a server.  The users mind is then placed in a digital environment which is set as a party city, essentially allowing the user to live forever in that environment.  In both of these examples, the life of the user is much more convenient than that of a person without the new technologies.  These predictions stem from an aspect of today’s culture which strives for a more convenient lifestyle, where advanced technologies allow people to be more entertained and less work-oriented.  

As technology continues to advance, so too does the dependence of the populus on the advanced technology.  Today, computers do most of the work that people would have done 20 or 30 years ago, and most entertainment comes from some kind of continually advancing technology in the form of social media or video games.  As an example, yet another episode of Black Mirror perfectly depicts the consequences of a society that is too dependent on technology.  In the final episode of the third season, “Hated in the Nation,” a society is depicted that is entirely dependent on ADI’s, drones that have taken the place of bees, as Colony Collapse Disorder has ravaged the population of natural bees.  During the episode, Vanessa Dahl, played by Esther Hall, states that if the ADI’s were to be shut off for even a few moments, the environmental effects would be devastating.  This episode is a prediction that shows the result of technological dependence evolving from a psychological dependence, to a physical one.  If this technology didn’t exist, then humans would become extinct.  “San Junipero” similarly depicts an evolved form of technological dependence, but not necessarily a physical one.  Kelly, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, says, referring to her deceased husband and daughter, “I wish that I could believe that he’s with her now, that they’re together, but I don’t.”  In this instance, Kelly represents the currently increasing number of people who are not religious.  “San Junipero” is depicting a civilization which caters to those beliefs, creating a digital  afterlife for people who don’t believe in a supernatural one.  The people who are then saved onto the servers and preserved within that afterlife become completely dependent upon this advanced technology in order to exist at all.  

In Archeologies of the Future by Fredrick Jameson, the author explains his take on the science fiction genre and the reasoning behind these predictions.  In the chapter “Progress Vs. Utopia, or, Can we imagine the future?”, Jameson goes into detail about the future of science fiction authors from the early 1900’s and says “These visions are themselves now historical and dated - streamlined cities of the future on peeling murals - while our lived experience of our greatest metropolises is one of urban decay and blight.  That particular Utopian future has in other words turned out to have been merely the future of one moment of what is now our own past.” (Jameson, 286).  In other words, the Jetson’s style of future with flying cars and jetpacks was merely a future that belonged to the past:  events that were then modern influenced the authors of the predictions.  “San Junipero” is not an exception to this:  The author took issues that are growing right now and used them as a basis to predict what the world would be like if those issues were no longer valid concerns.  Tens or hundreds of years from now, the people of the future will look upon this rendition of their time the same way people now look upon the visions of streamlined cities with flying cars and jetpacks: as nothing more than science fiction.

The basis of “San Junipero” can be dissected and seen as a future representation of issues that humans are facing in modern times.  With humanity progressing technologically as quickly as it is, new conveniences and devices are created and rapidly succeed previous devices.  While the next few iterations of this pattern can be predicted accurately, the farther into the future the predictions are, the less accurate they become.  This symptom of prophecy is caused by the inability of people to accurately predict the cultural problems of an entirely different, more advanced society and the ever volatile nature of people.  