My mom was very disappointed when I came out as a Republican in high school. And being a Republican in high school was really fun because all of my teachers were extremely liberal. Expressing anything that was counter to their deeply held beliefs was so easily unsettling that that form of contrarianism was very comfortable.

For the moment, machines able to 'think' in anything approaching a human sense remain science-fiction. How we should prepare for their potential emergence, however, is a deeply unsettling question - not least because intelligent machines seem considerably more achievable than any consensus around their programming or consequences.

We frame things in an off-kilter way because it's unsettling. In the 'Mr. Robot' world, that's the norm, and it's the norm for the point of view that we're looking for, which is Elliot's. With our compositions and our visual language and camera movements, it's important to always evoke that unsettling feeling underneath every scene.

For years I heeded the warning: Do monthly breast self-exams. Like most women, I did them on a 'sort of' basis. Every few months I'd sort of do a quick feel, but never as thoroughly as the doctors urged. I didn't want to go looking for trouble. If you look for it, you might find it. Looking for cancer is unsettling. Thank God I looked.

I was in my senior year of high school when I read 'Notes From Underground' by Dostoyevsky, and it was an exhilarating discovery. I hadn't known up until that moment that fiction could be like that. Fiction could say these things, could be unseemly, could be unsettling and distressing in that particular way, that immediate and urgent way.

When I was on the practice squad, it felt like I was just a guy who came in off the street three days a week to help actual NFL players get better. It was unsettling, unfulfilling and there were a few times when I wondered whether I would get my shot. But I kept showing up and kept competing. I was too stubborn to stop believing in myself.

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