'The future is broken' bellows the Stephen Hawking-a-like Voice Over for the second series of Charlie Brooker's dystopian drama 'Black Mirror'; and by the looks of things, no amount of duck tape and blue tack is gonna fix it! Back in 1948 George Orwell was spreading a similar warning about humanity's future; 'If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.' He correctly predicted security cameras on every street corner and mindless drones accepting what ever the media injected them with. Complete with lack of true talent or ambition (fans of TOWIE anyone)? In 1984, our trust in the government and the responsibilities we grant them with has been betrayed to lock us into a totalitarian hell, ruled by the party and its leader Big Brother (no kids he wasn't named after THAT show) who feeds on a cult of a personality. Whereas in Black Mirror our reliance on technology has finally turned against us. Even the shady politicians of 1984 fame are not immune to its power; becoming as helpless as the mere mortals. As depicted in the series one episode 'The National Anthem' where Rory Kinnear's Prime Minister is blackmailed to 'f**k a pig' on national television in order to save the people's Princess, backed by the masses on social media. Brooker himself cites the 'Black Mirror' as the very device you're probably reading this article on; laptops, computers, phones and tablets; 'The "black mirror" of the title is the one you'll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone.' As this equipment has already invaded our homes, the more chilling episodes of the anthology are those that focus on family and relationships albeit their demise and destruction at its hands! Such as series one's 'The Entire History of You' and this season's opener 'Be Right Back.' During the former, every human comes complete with a chip in the neck allowing them to record and replay experiences to their hearts content. Young Lawyer Liam becomes suspicious that his wife has had a fling with her sleazy friend Jonas. He replays conversations, arguments and reactions over and over again only for his suspicions to become confirmed correct and discover, or at least it is heavily implied - that his eighteen month old daughter isn't biologically his. The last gut wrenching scene is Liam stumbling round his empty family home, his wife and daughter gone for good. He makes his way to the bathroom to claw out his memory chip with a razor. In a gush of a blood and a blink of the eye all traces of his beautiful family and former happiness are erased. Next time you over analyze how many kisses your partner's boss put to them on their Instragram...remember Liam's story! In 'Be Right Back' Ash's reliance on social media, online forums and e-mail is instrumental in his partner Martha's eventual downfall. Martha jokes that he lives his life online; Ash can't pick up a family photo without feeling the need to Tweet about it. When he dies in a road accident Martha's friend signs her up to a grief dealing programme which uses Ash's online activities to replicate him. Thus allowing Martha, to instant message him, Skype (other services of this nature are available) and talk on the phone. Interestingly, all of the devices that Brooker explains are signified by the 'Black Mirror' feature, whilst being synced to contain fake Ash within the cloud. Following a pregnancy scan, in excitement Martha drops her phone almost losing Ash for good. He explains that there's another experimental and expensive level to the service, allowing his online consciousness to be applied to a physical clone of the former real life Ash. Martha quickly invests but it soon becomes apparent that the clone is all too perfect and not a patch on the real Ash. Devoid of all that made Ash the man he was. Awkward, fumbling sexual intercourse is now replaced by long lasting formulaic moves fake Ash has downloaded from the internet which would make Hugh Hefner blush. With Martha as his activator he is unwilling to put up a fight or ignore her orders and every relationship needs a good spat now and again right? Even if it's just to spew your Paranoia that the Mother in Law hates youget it out of your system now! Fake Ash has no stubble, moles or scars or even negative views as he is fed only by the information real Ash uploaded online. Of course all of us project a bias positive image of ourselves to the world wide webthat's why if you're gonna Facebook perve, go straight for the Profile photos album! So a friend of mine tells me anyway. This leads Martha to scream that the clone is 'just not enough of him' and reluctantly hides him in the attic, later allowing her daughter to visit the clone on weekends and special occasions. Overall, Ash was disengaged from life, instead living it through social media. This ultimately led to Martha gaining access to fake Ash and therefore becoming disengaged from the grief process that she needed to naturally go through. #ironicvisiouscycle. In 1984, Orwell naturally drew from events at the time of writing, depicting atrocities that had their origins deep routed in post world war two society to form his cautionary tale. For example it is generally accepted that Big Brother's appearance was modeled on Joseph Stalin and the party's 'Newspeak' policy (a simplified and reduced version of the English Language designed to discourage concepts of freedom or individuality) uses terms such as 'Ingsoc' which is supposed to stand for 'English Socialism.' Nowadays, if you read any text written by someone with 'teen' at the end of their age; you'll see that Orwell got the future pretty spot on. One could argue that Brooker in 'Black Mirror' is attempting to replicate Orwell's achievement, predicting the future whilst warning us to prevent it at the same time. I can't have been the only viewer who received a chill when Fake Ash said he was 'in the cloud'? Mostly, because I was syncing my I-Phone and iTunes at the time and thought 'God it's gonna take ages if he's on it too!' However, to borrow a phrase from another science fiction franchise; 'The Future Is Not Set, There Is No Fate But What We Make For Ourselves.' Anyway, if you've got any sense you won't have read this farand you'd have switched off your Black Mirror...