This conceptual working paper, developed within the HOMO HYBRIDUS project, proposes a genealogy of the Black Mirror as a structure of algorithmic return.
Its central thesis is simple:
The Black Mirror was not born with AI.
AI only made the mirror speak.
Before generative AI, digital platforms had already turned human life into operational data. But before platforms, programmable computation had already established the minimal form of the mirror: human input, invisible formal operation, and visible return.
Before the Black Mirror spoke, it calculated.
Before it observed us, it returned a number.
The first light of the mirror was not an image, but an answer.