Black Mirror: Is Rivermind a Real Brain Technology? How Does It Work?

In its seventh season, Netflix’s ‘Black Mirror’ draws upon real-life things to extrapolate them in a realistic manner and deliver heartbreaking tales that have the potential to make the audience sad and angry at the same time. The first episode, ‘Common People,’ itself focuses on the issues that despite their high tech nature may feel too close to home. The story follows the life of Amanda and Mike, who discover a revolutionary technology called Rivermind after she falls into a coma. In the beginning, this technology is a way to give Amanda second life, but everything goes to hell one step at a time, and it feels all too real in several aspects. SPOILERS AHEAD.

The Fictional Rivermind is Inspired by Real Subscription Services

Rivermind in ‘Black Mirror’ is a fictional technology but the idea behind it came from the real things around us. The show’s creator, Charlie Brooker, had been exploring the idea of a service where a person would have to pay to stay alive. With everything requiring a subscription these days, this idea didn’t seem too far-fetched, so Brooker sat about to write a story. In the beginning, he thought it would be more of a satire, but the more he thought about it, the more grim the story got. The idea of the ever-expanding tiers came from the general tech in the current world, where capitalizing on a technology leads a company to reduce the services to dismal levels, and a person has to pay more and more if they want to continue getting the level of services they were promised in the beginning.

Another thing that stuck with Brooker was the advertisements. He was listening to a true crime podcast one day, and after talking about the horrific crime, the speaker suddenly took a break from the narrative and started talking about a product that their listeners should buy, and then immediately went back to talking about the crime. This weirded out Brooker in the best way possible, and he knew that he had to add this bit in the story. As the story expanded, he borrowed more from the current system of subscriptions and embedded them in the story to make it feel all the more realistic. This way, he laid the framework for the audience to believe in Rivermind and hate it or be angry with it and its representatives for what happens to Amanda and Mike, even though the whole thing remains entirely fictional.

Rivermind Works on a Streaming Model

On the surface, Rivermind is presented as a technology that could change the world for the better. It helps people recover from brain damage, something that is more often than not permanent and deadly. In Amanda’s case, a tumor inside her head grows to the point that it damages her parietal lobe, rendering her unable to live a normal life. It throws her into a coma, which can only end with death. The doctors can remove the tumor, but that would mean removing an entire part of her brain, and she would still be no better than she is at the moment. This is where Rivermind comes in. Before the surgery, it clones the damaged part of a person’s brain to create a backup in their main server. Then, they create a synthetic copy of the portion, which they put into a person’s head after removing the damaged part. Once the surgery is done, the synthetic part is connected to the main server, and all the necessary cognitive function is relayed through it. As long as the person is connected to the network, they will work just fine.

Like any new thing in the market, when Rivermind is rolled out, it is made as affordable to the people as possible. The surgery is free, which gives the buyer a sense that they have a great deal on their hands. However, they don’t realize that the service they are actually paying for is not the surgery itself but what comes after it. Instead of taking money from them in one go, the company resorts to the streaming model, where they must pay for the services every month. For as long as you keep paying, your brain will work just fine. In the month that you cannot make the payment, the services will be halted and will only resume when you have confirmed the payment for the next month. With his wife on her deathbed, paying $300 per month feels nothing in comparison to giving her a second chance at life.

What Mike and the other customers are not told is that apart from streaming cognitive functions to Amanda and others, it will also draw information from their brains. In a new tier called Lux, subscribers are allowed to access talents that are not inherently theirs. For example, someone who has never worked out in their life can suddenly do parkour like a pro. That happens because the main server is able to extract that information from the people whose brains are trained to do parkour. For this, and to get a break from the load of sustaining all the users, the main frame requires the subscribers to sleep a little longer, only an hour or so. This makes sense in the beginning, but its disturbing aspects take a while to come out.

Rivermind’s Revolutionary Technology is Poisoned by a Capitalist Mindset

In real life, we are well aware of the increasing price of services. Streaming services like Netflix are known to have hiked their prices from time to time, and they are not the only ones to do so. The more something is in demand, the pricier it gets, but to keep it affordable enough for everyone, tiers are created. So, you can buy a subscription to the lowest tiers, but it will come with fewer perks. The higher tier model you subscribe to, the better the services and their quality. The same happens with Rivermind as well. In the beginning, the prices are low to attract users. Once a customer base is built and the company expands its reach, more and more people get attached to it, and that’s when the prices start to get higher.

With each update, a new tier is added, which demands more money from its users. Further, the lower tiers bear the brunt of the company’s desire to rake in more cash by attracting investors and placing ads. What’s really bad is that a person has no control over the ads. They can come out at any time, depending on what product the situation demands. And when the ads play, the person’s brain is shut off for the time being, so they are not even aware of what they are doing. It is only when someone else tells them about it that they become aware of the ad thing. At first, it is one or two ads every other day. But then, the frequency of ads keeps increasing. To do away with the nuisance, one has to pay an additional $800 to get Premium services. To upgrade to Lux, they must pay $1000 more, but there is also the option of getting boosters that will allow them a temporary reprieve.

And then, there is the thing about the server. Initially, Mike is told that his wife will only need to sleep for one or two hours longer. However, with time, the number of hours increases, and this starts to disrupt Amanda’s life. Despite sleeping for 10-12 hours each day, she is still exhausted and feels worse with each day. This is when she is told that this is because she isn’t exactly sleeping. Her brain is still working as it is connected to the main frame and is feeding it to keep it running. The lower a person’s tier, the more time they have to give to the system, which means sleeping for more hours and losing out on the life for which they pay so much. To lower the hours, they have to pay more, and the cycle goes on and on.