Mr. Robot Reflection
Created by Sam Esmail and starring Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson, a brilliant cybersecurity engineer who struggles with social anxiety and drug addiction, the television show Mr. Robot appears to chronicle the life of Anderson and his struggles surrounding the infamous E Corp.
As the largest conglomerate in the world, E Corp makes everything from computer chips to blue jeans. An employee of Allsafe, a large cyber security company, it is Alderson’s job to protect the firm’s largest client: E Corp. However, a cyber-vigilante, the protagonist seeks to be a morally upstanding citizen by hacking and exposing a number of corrupt individuals. This is witnessed firsthand when Alderson hacks into the personal computer files of a wealthy coffee shop owner and exposes thousands of illegally obtained images of child pornography to the NYPD. Because of this moral compass, it is made apparent to the audience that Alderson does not believe in E Corp’s financially gluttonous ways. Instead of exposing the group that hacked their servers, he instead leaves the bug dormant in their system. As a result, a man by the name of Mr. Robot approaches Alderson and offers him a place on a team of sophisticated hackers known as fsociety. Soon after their initial meeting, Alderson accompanies the mysterious Mr. Robot to the group’s Coney Island hideout. While there, he learns that the goal of the secretive organization is to wipe clean a significant amount of consumer debt by destroying much of the data stored on E Corp’s servers.
Incredibly interesting, and societally pertinent, the show Mr. Robot also relates a great deal to the material covered in class. Throughout the semester, we have spent hours discussing the role of digital media in our everyday lives. However, after watching just two episodes of the show, I realized just how heavily our society relies on technology. Whether it be access to billions of dollars across thousands of different bank accounts, or classified documents essential to national safety, cyber security is the only line of defense in protecting against complete societal mayhem. I believe Mr. Robot is a worthwhile binge option because it highlights just how reliant society has become on today’s digital
