Transhumanismus

When was the last time you watched a movie where you could control the plot?

Bandersnatch is the first interactive film in the sci fi anthology series Black Mirror. Written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade, the film tells the story of young programmer Stefan Butler, who is adapting a fantasy choose-your-own-adventure novel called Bandersnatch into a video game. Throughout the film, viewers are given the power to influence Butler’s decisions, leading to diverging plots with different endings.

Like many Black Mirror episodes, this film is mind-bending, dark, and thought-provoking. In addition to innovating cinema as we know it, it is a fascinating rumination on free will, parallel realities, and emerging technologies.

Pick Your Own Adventure

With a non-linear script, Bandersnatch is a viewing experience like no other. Throughout  the film viewers are given the option of making a decision for the protagonist. In these instances, they have 10 seconds to make a decision until a default decision is made. For example, in the early stage of the plot, Butler is given the choice of accepting or rejecting Tuckersoft’s offer to develop a video game and the viewer gets to decide what he does. The decision then shapes the plot accordingly.

The video game Butler is developing involves moving through a graphical maze of corridors while avoiding a creature called the Pax, and at times making choices through an on-screen instruction (sound familiar?). In other words, it’s a pick-your-own-adventure video game in a pick-your-own-adventure movie.

Many viewers have ended up spending hours exploring all the different branches of the narrative (though the average viewing is 90 minutes). One user on reddit has mapped out an entire flowchart, showing how all the different decisions (and pseudo-decisions) lead to various endings.

However, over time, Butler starts to question his own free will. It’s almost as if he’s beginning to realize that the audience is controlling him. In one branch of the narrative, he is confronted by this reality when the audience indicates to him that he is being controlled in a Netflix show: “I am watching you on Netflix. I make all the decisions for you”. Butler, as you can imagine, is horrified by this message.

But Butler isn’t the only one who has an illusion of choice. We, the seemingly powerful viewers, also appear to operate under the illusion of choice. Despite there being five main endings to the film, they are all more or less the same.

The Science Behind Bandersnatch

The premise of Bandersnatch isn’t based on fantasy, but hard science. Free will has always been a widely-debated issue in neuroscience, with reputable scientists and studies demonstrating that the whole concept may be an illusion.

In the 1970s, a psychologist named Benjamin Libet conducted a series of experiments that studied voluntary decision making in humans. He found that brain activity imitating an action, such as moving your wrist, preceded the conscious awareness of the action.

Psychologist Malcom Gladwell theorizes that while we like to believe we spend a lot of time thinking about our decisions, our mental processes actually work rapidly, automatically, and often subconsciously, from relatively little information. In addition to this, thinking and making decisions are usually a byproduct of several different brain systems, such as the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex working together. You are more conscious of some information processes in the brain than others.

As neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris points out in his book Free Will, “You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn’t choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is making choices on the basis of preferences and beliefs that have been hammered into it over a lifetime.” Like Butler, we may believe we are operating under full agency of our abilities, but we are at the mercy of many internal and external factors that influence our decisions.

Beyond free will, Bandersnatch also taps into the theory of parallel universes, a facet of the astronomical theory of the multiverse. In astrophysics, there is a theory that there are parallel universes other than our own, where all the choices you made are played out in alternate realities. For instance, if today you had the option of having cereal or eggs for breakfast, and you chose eggs, in a parallel universe, you chose cereal. Human history and our lives may have taken different paths in these parallel universes.

The Future of Cinema

In the future, the viewing experience will no longer be a passive one. Bandersnatch is just a glimpse into how technology is revolutionizing film as we know it and making it a more interactive and personalized experience. All the different scenarios and branches of the plot were scripted and filmed, but in the future, they may be adapted real-time via artificial intelligence.

Virtual reality may allow us to play an even more active role by making us participants or characters in the film. Data from your history of preferences and may be used to create a unique version of the plot that is optimized for your viewing experience.

Let’s also not underestimate the social purpose of advancing film and entertainment. Science fiction gives us the ability to create simulations of the future. Different narratives can allow us to explore how powerful technologies combined with human behavior can result in positive or negative scenarios. Perhaps in the future, science fiction will explore implications of technologies and observe human decision making in novel contexts, via AI-powered films in the virtual world.

Image Credit: andrey_l / Shutterstock.com

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Powered by virtual learning, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, e-books are well suited for supplementing conventional textbooks. Students …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

We are very pleased to announce our first meetup of 2019.

Business of Future: digital transformation driven by AI

Hosted by Neurons Budapest by  Ottó Werschitz

Venue: DXC Technology Bartók Béla út 43-47 · Budapest

In our next meetup Viktor Boldog, AI & Analytics Business Development Manager @ DXC Technology will share his view on the possible futures of industries and eco-systems driven by A.I. and new innovative technologies!

The event will be hosted by DXC Technology’s conference room inside their office building. For the proper registration needed for admittance to DXC office space, please register yourselves following this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/business-of-future-digital-transformation-driven-by-ai-tickets-53786874991

The meetup will be held in Hungarian language.

For more information visit our meetup.com page at

#meetup_oembed .mu_clearfix:after { visibility: hidden; display: block; font-size: 0; content: " "; clear: both; height: 0; }* html #meetup_oembed .mu_clearfix, *:first-child+html #meetup_oembed .mu_clearfix { zoom: 1; }#meetup_oembed { background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px;-moz-border-radius:3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;border-radius:3px;margin:0; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; }#meetup_oembed h3 { font-weight:normal; margin:0 0 10px; padding:0; line-height:26px; font-family:Georgia,Palatino,serif; font-size:24px }#meetup_oembed p { margin: 0 0 10px; padding:0; line-height:16px; }#meetup_oembed img { border:none; margin:0; padding:0; }#meetup_oembed a, #meetup_oembed a:visited, #meetup_oembed a:link { color: #1B76B3; text-decoration: none; cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; }#meetup_oembed a:hover { color: #1B76B3; text-decoration: underline; }#meetup_oembed a.mu_button { font-size:14px; -moz-border-radius:3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;border-radius:3px;border:2px solid #A7241D;color:white!important;text-decoration:none;background-color: #CA3E47; background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #ca3e47, #a8252e); background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left bottom, left top, color-stop(0, #a8252e), color-stop(1, #ca3e47));disvplay:inline-block;padding:5px 10px; }#meetup_oembed a.mu_button:hover { color: #fff!important; text-decoration: none; }#meetup_oembed .photo { width:50px; height:50px; overflow:hidden;background:#ccc;float:left;margin:0 5px 0 0;text-align:center;padding:1px; }#meetup_oembed .photo img { height:50px }#meetup_oembed .number { font-size:18px; }#meetup_oembed .thing { text-transform: uppercase; color: #555; } Neurons.AI (Hungary – Budapest)

Budapest, HU
331 Neurons

This is a group for anyone interested in Artificial Intelligence, how it can be used in the enterprise and what benefits it can bring. This group was started to meet others wi…

Next Meetup

Business of Future: digital transformation driven by AI

Wednesday, Jan 23, 2019, 6:00 PM
44 Attending

Check out this Meetup Group →

Link to Full Article: Read Here

The report titled 'Landscape of AI/ML (Machine Learning) Research In India,' claims that AI skills on LinkedIn has witnessed an increase of 190% …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

The company has a large AI research lab that employs some of the world's top experts in machine learning. But the use of AI can itself raise serious …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

Jump headfirst into the machine learningNovember 9, 2018In "Applications" … Do You Know The Mathematics For Machine Learning ?July 30, 2018In …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

Jump headfirst into the machine learningNovember 9, 2018In "Applications". List of Data Science Books to ReadDecember 9, 2018In "Books".

Link to Full Article: Read Here

He was addressing the students appearing in the entry test of the Presidential Initiative for Artificial Intelligence and Computing in Karachi on Sunday.

Link to Full Article: Read Here

Cancer has long been a major issue across all of society. A lot of work has been done to help stop them, but the medical industry still a long way off …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

The two day Pan IIT Conclave 2019, on "Artificial Intelligence: What does the future hold for India?", was inaugurated by Vijay Goel, Minister of State …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

Data science is the industry that has resulted from the overlapping of maths, statistics and computer programming. It refers to the use of mathematical …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

Project management. Machine learning, artificial intelligence. Deliberate practice. Life-long learning. Continuous improvement. Risks and return.

Link to Full Article: Read Here

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Social Media market segmented on the basis of suppliers, consumers, drivers, opportunities market challenges, indicators, …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

Data Science Institute at the University of Virginia. … Get the latest news. Subscribe to receive updates from the Data Science Institute. First Name

Link to Full Article: Read Here

Coffee is served at the in-person seminar** Speaker: Stathis Gennatas, UCSF Lecture Details: TBD.

Link to Full Article: Read Here

The BIF invests primarily in young (pre-Series A and Series A) startups, focused on ventures in the spheres of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

I am confident that our extensive experience in natural language processing, data mining, machine learning, and deep learning technologies will …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

Òscar Lao, from the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG) at the University of Tartu and colleagues used deep learning algorithms and …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

Artificial intelligence appears to have helped evolutionary biologists to identify an ancient human ancestor, whose identity is not yet known to modern …

Link to Full Article: Read Here

This book combines the analytic principles of digital business and data science with business practice and big data. The interdisciplinary, contributed …

Link to Full Article: Read Here