Black Mirror Tech Ranked

Season 3, episode 1.Nosedive."

People review others on this social network just like they rate restaurants on Yelp or their Uber driver. Every human gets rated for every interaction that day. That rating sits in an implant on their body.

This system decides if you get an apartment or a work promotion. People who remove their implants get rejected by society.

Season 3, episode 5.Men Against Fire."

MASS is a neural implant that boosts the five senses. Soldiers use it to get extra info, talk, and receive advanced orders. Sometimes, it mutes the sense of smell, making soldiers ignore the smell of dead bodies.

A key feature of the implant shows reality visually. In "Men Against Fire," it makes persecuted civilians look like monsters soldiers plan to kill in a genocide. MASS turns normal people into monsters.

Season 4, episode 2.Arkangel."

This surveillance tool can go into a child's head. Parents control it with an iPad-like tablet. You track your kid with GPS, see the world through their eyes, look through and replay their memories, and block images they see in real life.

You can blur real-life blood images if you don't want your child to see violence or gore. If your 15-year-old daughter sneaks out with her older boyfriend, you can watch it from her view (if you must). The implant cannot leave.

Season 1, episode 2.Fifteen Million Merits."

These ads track your eye movements. If you look away, the ad stops and only starts when you focus. You must watch the whole ad for it to disappear.

Season 4, episode 6.Black Museum."

This tech lets you move your consciousness into another thing, human or object. Science is vague. Rolo Haynes uses a tube to pull consciousness from a head and put it into something else—a person, a toy, a hologram—the sky is the limit.

In the episode, the tech lets a comatose woman use her husband's body, which makes his head loud. The tech also lets you pause the other consciousness for weeks. The woman ends up inside a toy monkey that only says "Monkey loves you" or "Monkey needs a hug."

This advanced tech has another layer. It makes a copy of a consciousness that can move to a hologram. The copy feels pain, but it isn't the original consciousness since it can be copied and stored everywhere. It is complex.

Season 2, episode 2, ""White Bear"

This tiny headband wipes out a whole day of someone's memory. For "White Bear," it punishes a woman for her part in a terrible crime.

Season 4, episode 5, "Metalhead"

Robotic dogs hunt human survivors in the future where "Metalhead" happens. These dogs have tons of ways to kill, operate cars, and use solar power. Though blocky, they move well; they can flip over if they land on their side.

Season 1, episode 2, "Fifteen Million Merits"

In a future where people work as servants on bikes to power the lights, money is only digital. Merits equalFarmVilleCoins people get after riding for a set time. They trade for food, event entry, and cool avatar clothes.

Season 2, episode 4, "White Christmas"

A cookie copies someone's mind. You upload it into a virtual body that acts as a personal assistant. This copy knows user preferences down to the last detail, making it great for tasks like cooking or setting your smart house temperature. The problem is, cookies sometimes forget they are just copies.

Season 4, episode 1, "USS Callister"

This digital DNA scanner builds realistic avatars of real people inside the virtual reality game Infinity. The scanner pulls DNA from anything—a hair, a cup—and makes a copy so real it holds the person's memories.

Season 3, episode 6, "Hated In The Nation"

Bee populations dropped in the future. These robotic drones continue the work of their insect relatives, pollinating the world. Granular programmed the robo-bees to use 3D printing for hives and self-duplication. They have facial recognition and small spy cameras the government uses to check civilians and stop terror plots or crimes.

Bee drones can be hacked to carry out killing orders. The victims are chosen based on how many times the #DeathTo hashtag is tweeted at them.

Season 1, episode 3, "The Entire History of You"

A grain is implanted behind the ear, recording everything a person sees, hears, or does. It acts like a DVR for memories. People can replay memories for others to watch on their eyes or a screen.

Season 2, episode 1, "Be Right Back"

This service lessens loss by letting people talk to a real-life simulation of a dead loved one. The service collects data on a deceased person through user uploads and social media history. It builds an artificial intelligence that looks and sounds exactly like the person—it even has the same memories.

This technology has several levels. You can talk on the phone, assuming sound files exist, or chat via instant messaging. The final, extreme level involves a synthetic android body that activates after soaking in a bathtub full of water. It looks and talks almost exactly like the dead person you miss.

Season 3, episode 2,Playtest."

Game developer SaitoGemu uses this augmented reality technology, a "mushroom," for a next-level horror game. A chip goes into the back of a user's neck. It probes the player's brain for data on their deepest, darkest fears. The device then shows these fears in an augmented reality game, making worst nightmares real.

Season 2, episode 4,White Christmas."

This augmented reality device acts like a super serious Google Glass permanently placed in a user's eyeball. It closely mimics Season 4'sArchangel.This technology is user-controlled, unlike the tablet version anyone can use.

Z-eye lets users read and send text without phones. People can make audio and video calls, take photos, zoom on hard text, and stream their view. Users can block a person, turning them into a static silhouette. Those on the sex offender registry are blocked from all humanity and appear as red static to everyone.

Season 4, episode 3,Crocodile."

In "Crocodile," Corroborators.These gadgets let insurance investigators check claims. The brain-scanning machine accesses a person's memory of an event and plays it on a monitor for the investigator to judge. People cannot hide what they share; it shows their view of how the event happened.

A person's view is not always the truth. It just shows how they saw something, so insurers gather many views.

Season 4, episode 6,Black Museum."

This device moves a physical feeling from one person to another, whether it is intense pain or pleasure from endorphins. Doctors use it mainly for emergency room care, a method pioneered by Dr. Peter Dawson.

For the Sympathetic Diagnoser to work, a patient wears a special headset. This sends a signal to an implant in Dawson's neck. This results in better treatment when a patient cannot speak or symptoms are confusing.

Season 4, episode 1,USS Callister."

The next-level virtual reality game.Infinity.This game uses a neural device to put a player's consciousness into the game world, but it does not implant like mostBlack Mirror.Instead, you log in with a simple button on your temple.

Like older, less advanced games, you interact with players on the same network inside the game (think an X-Box headset). Once you connect toInfinity.Your body stays in a trance until you log out.

Season 4, episode 4.Hang the DJ."

The System is a dating app. It uses an algorithm to find your partner's match. It runs 2,000 relationship simulations. This is the Tinder of the near future.

Season 3, episode 4.San Junipero."

This tech lets people upload their brains into computers. They can live their wildest fantasies in the virtual city of San Junipero. Injured or disabled people with limited movement find this especially appealing. Dying people can upload themselves to San Junipero's cloud and live forever in the city's computer-made paradise.

Season 4, episode 3.Crocodile."

In Black Mirror., Fences uses an autonomous pizza delivery van like the one Pizza Hut announcedThey rolled out in January 2018. This lets you get hot pizza without an unreliable driver (though it does not always slow for people walking).

Season 4, episode 6.Black Museum."

This machine connects to a comatose patient. It lets them give yes or no answers even though they are unconscious. It blinks green for "yes" and red for "no."