Project Details
CS3043 - Social Implications of Computing
Team Members: April Bollinger, Asha Buchanan, Ryan Nguyen, Claire Desrosiers, and Nia Junod
The purpose of this project is to explore the computing technologies present in Black Mirror: Joan is Awful and present the computing technologies contained within and their societal effects as viewed through the lens of Ethics for the Information Age, 8th edition written by Michael J. Quinn.
Black Mirror: Joan is Awful - Summary
Joan is Awful tells the story of your average working-class woman who discovers her privacy has been violated when she sees her life played out on a TV show on the streaming platform Streamberry. Her life takes a turn for the worse as the show gains popularity amongst her friends, family, and co-workers, and private moments are put on blast without her consent. In an attempt to regain her privacy, the main character Joan, hires a legal team to take action against Streamberry. This is where she realizes that she had agreed to allow the company to use her private information and life events when she signed the terms and conditions when registering for the service. This highlights the importance of introducing and teaching the concepts of information privacy. In this television show, her character is played by an AI-generated, CGI deepfake of Salma Hayek. In the real world, we see the rise in the popularity of AI-generated content in Holywood as well. As Joan’s world starts to seemingly fall apart and she is deemed as “awful” she begins to realize that those around her have formed a whole new opinion on her based on what they have seen on her show. The episode takes us through how Joan finally overcomes and ends this show and destroys the Quamputer (Quantum Computer).