The two shows, Black Mirror and West World, give the viewer an insight of possibilities on what technological advances could amount to be. Although the two shows have various distinguishable qualities, they can relate to each other in the sense of a futuristic world where reality is altered. These shows are “what if” situations that can truly be terrifying and make us humans fear for our future.

West World is a show based in the future about an alternate world created for humans to pay to enter and play. The world is an old western society and is filled with man-made fake humans that act and look just like real humans. Real humans can pay to enter the world and are able to do whatever they want inside the world. The fake humans are programmed to repeat a narrative every day, and every night they are reprogramed to forget and restart. If damaged or ‘killed’ they are repaired and sent back into the world. As the show continues some of the man-made humans remember events from previous days, catching onto the whole scheme of the game causing issues to arise with not just the players but also the creators. Black Mirror is a series of non-related episodes that display a twist on society with very wild scenarios of technology taking over, such as an episode of mechanical bees taking over and killing the human population.

Although the shows are similar in their themes, they have various differences. In Black Mirror the technology isn’t always the center of story, but rather the characters and their personal stories. But in West World, the technology (the world and the fake humans) is what the show is centered around. For example, in one episode of Black Mirror the future had technology in which people rated each other on their phones and you had to have a certain rating in order to go to specific parties or events. The main focus of the story wasn’t the rating technology on the phone, but rather how a particular girl cared so much about her rating that she ended up self-destructing her own life. In West World, the fake humans are main characters in the show, so the technology is a major part of the show each episode. 

Other differences that separate the concept of the two shows include that in West World there are internal forces that alter the show while in Black Mirror it is usually an outside force. West World the characters inside the game alter and affect the show differently while Black Mirror usually the technology plays as an outer force role in the show altering the people inside, and the reciprocal for West World.  The man made robots play more of a bigger role in the problems arise. On the other hand, Black Mirror, the technology still has an important role, but it is almost as if the technology lingers around and shadows the humans who are in the show.

The two shows are also similar in many ways. One similarity is that the technologies in the shows are created for good, but tend to become dangerous to the characters. For example, in Black Mirror there is an episode where mechanical bees are created because natural bees went extinct. They are programmed to act like real bees and pollinate and better the lives of humans and planet Earth, but someone hacks the control of the bees and is able to use them to kill people. In West World, the “game” was created to allow humans to play and have fun, but as the fake humans begin to remember, they start to feel pain and sadness which is not what was intended. Both of the shows give an insight into what could potentially go wrong if humans continue to develop new technology. 

Both shows give us insight to what the future may hold and in both senses seem terrifying. We as humans tend to grow technologically faster than we can account for, and in both shows causing major world-wide problems for a wide percentage of innocent people. They both start with either companies or a small group who have an idea to “better” the world. This turns into the mass population being affected and in the end killing many people.  Throughout the Black Mirror episodes many of them end in a devastating endings that leaves the viewer on a cliff hanger in a sense that makes the viewer predict the world is going to be widely affected by the situations in each episode. West World throughout the series there are many twists and turns that really affect the pathway not just for the game but human existence.

Sometimes I wish that we could just go back in time and not have to deal with all these wild technologies that have been introduced into our modern era. These two works of art really show us truly terrifying “what if” situations, more people should really be aware of possible changes because it might just possibly affect everyone in the whole world. Technological advances have done plenty of good, but can also do even greater amounts of damage.