The Secrets of Virtual Reality and Digital Knowledge in The X-Files, Black Mirror and Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams: Power, perception and evidence

Abstract

Numerous uncertainties, questions, and dilemmas synthesized in The X-Files demonstrate to what extent their interrelations in popular culture are grounded in epistemophilia. The peak of this preoccupation with knowledge and data reached in crime television series is evident in the deduction that comes in the form of forensic investigations, which in The X-Files co-exist with attempts to prove the (non)existence of the supernatural.
As a media product that has established itself as the founder and signifier of the cultural legitimization of paranoia, The X-Files exploits numerous aspects of the supernatural and its counterfeits by fusing the imaginary and the real.
The X-Files and its cultural offshoots Black Mirror and Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams are rooted in the fusion of the exact, speculative and technological, which they utilise to present the changes in contemporary reality coming in the guise of the near future. They achieve this by enveloping fears and dangers in a shroud of mystery – from alien colonizers to the consequences of imminent technological development, often in combination with bioterrorism, cloning, genetic engineering, virtualization, replication, and other generators of otherness – both biological and technological, as well as an otherness that their increasingly complex and dangerous interplay creates, all of which prove invariably fatal for humanness and mankind.
The X-Files is built on absurd coalitions which harbor numerous secrets. These secrets are often on the verge of illusion, and the omnipresent paranoia, instead of bringing them closer to resolution, paradoxically, manages to successfully neutralize them. Black Mirror and Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams deepen these secrets further by playing with the apparent and the obvious, and by dissolving the boundaries between once clear opposites. They manage this by relying heavily on the position accepted by the viewers – the position that nothing is as it seems. In this way, they invite the viewers to construct their narratives and interpretations after seeing an episode of the show and thus take part in the process of revealing the secrets and answers to the related dilemmas not by simply retelling them but by using their revelations to shape and re-shape the existing theories and knowledge. The conclusions seem to be within reach but they are never grasped and remain highly ambiguous.
Illuminating insights that The X-Files, Black Mirror and Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams produce by delving deep into existential nightmares of other people reveal that science and technology are no longer mere instruments of the human desire to gain and extend knowledge, but a key factor that determines the fate of humanity. Increased awareness of this does not suggest or produce lasting solutions and final answers. Instead, science and technology explore political, cultural and ethical implications arising from the ruthless exploitation of the enormous yet limited potential of nature and man.