The portrayal of computer technology on television, either of those that create it, work in it, or of the manifestation of it in our lives, is suddenly at a point where we can feel content it’s being depicted with intelligence and thoughtfulness. Geeks are not so outlandish these days, they’ve been humanized, just as hackers are merely everyday people with a profound propensity for finding information and more importantly embodying the virtue of patience. Even the tech dystopian angle, moved back in time to a place without gun-slinging cyborgs, is reliant on realism to show us such things as how omnipresent video recording technology might make a dent in our national well-being. Below is a list of some of the shows (back or new in 2016) that have already attained cult status, treated technology seriously and given us some of the most memorable tech-based TV we’ve seen.

Silicon Valley

HBO’s Silicon Valley will begin its third season sometime in the Spring of 2016. Created in part by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-head, King of the Hill), who is a former, disenchanted employee at a start-up in Silicon Valley, the show works as a satire on ‘the industry’.

The series follows a team of entrepreneurs as they look for funding from some of the Valley’s heaviest hitting venture capitalists. In part it makes a mockery of geeks in the valley, and those that can propel them into the limelight, but at the same time in a sometimes slapstick way portrays many of the real-life aspects of the people involved in that industry. If it is perhaps a little unfair with its satirical excesses, it does at least get the vernacular right, knows the industry inside out and understands the dynamics of the workplace. It’s also been called melodramatic and stereotypical by some people working in Silicon Valley.

Apple cofounder, Steve Wozniak, seemed to like it. He told Business Insider, “Silicon Valley, I watched the entire first season. It fit into this thing where when we started Apple there were companies that would spin-off.” Satire is often stereotypical, that’s how it works; it exaggerates and manipulates facts and held-beliefs, but it only works when the audience knows there’s some truth in the fiction.

Mr. Robot

USA Network’s hacker series Mr. Robot has rightly been called the best depiction of hacking on TV yet. That’s not such a grand accomplishment as it’s arguably the only show on television that has tried to portray hacking realistically.

Season 2 of Mr. Robot should be coming in the summer of 2016, and according to actor Rami Malek, who plays encumbered and outnumbered hacker Elliot Alderson, “It’s only going to get harder.” Malek explained in an interview that the show is not just anti-establishment, but wants to touch on themes such as global debt, the class system, with an “unlikely hero”, our hacker, using his gifts to right some wrongs.

Technically accurate, and according to Malek, approved by spokespeople from the hacking group Anonymous, Mr. Robot is aligned at the right time with many people’s fears and beliefs in terms of conflicts between big business, the government it supports, and the public. It’s a show of our times, and season 2 will no doubt be just as intriguing as season 1.

Black Mirror (US version)

Across the pond in the UK satirist Charlie Brooker created possibly one of the darkest series ever to be created in Black Mirror (2011-2014). The show, if hard to watch at times, gained universal acclaim and it seems that in 2016 it will be re-made in the USA with possibly Brooker involved (previous series are available on Netflix). It’s been called a Twilight Zone for the digital age, and in Brooker’s words, the hangover of our addiction to computer technology.

Featured in the first series are improved versions of current tech, such as something similar to Google Glass, or a kind of social media where we attempt to maintain a steady stream of points for competing certain tasks – in reference to the somewhat bleak assertion that at some point in time social media with the Internet of Things will have us all living like rats in a Skinner Box.

It’s vile at times, upsetting, unsettling, ugly, outright frightening, but whether you believe in such a technological dystopia doesn’t matter; it’s not a statement of what will become, but what could become if things went terribly wrong. If for instance at every moment our actions are recorded, or we are recording others’ actions, the fall-out could be horrific. Black Mirror is alone is creating such a believable, yet unbelievable state of affairs pertaining to the future of tech and its role in society.

Humans

Another critically acclaimed TV series coming out of the UK, which will come back to Channel 4 and AMC in 2016, is Humans. A get under your skin AI, sci-fi thriller, Humans doesn’t stray much further from previous AI nightmares depicted on TV and film, i.e., those machines might turn nasty, or what do we do when they start to seem a little too human; but it does it with aplomb – as The Verge explains here, “It’s ambitious, inherently kind, and knows how to cut to the emotional quick. The most useful thing about the show’s blooming network of androids is what they can tell us about ourselves.”

The androids, or synths, are not skulking around heavily industrialized cities on the verge of collapse, or even being meddled with in some lab hidden behind a verdant mountain range, but hanging out in your living room like the family cat. AI meets suburbia, it becomes part of the family drama, neither good nor bad, but always unsettling. Their stay in natural society of course is not to everyone’s liking, and so the drama soon starts to ease in the thrills.

Photo credit: James Vaughan via Flickr