A controversial 2011 three part, three-hour series made for the BBC by Adam Curtis discusses how humans have been colonized by the machines they have built. Although we may not realize it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of computers. It claims that computers have failed to liberate us and instead have distorted and simplified our view of the world around us.
The title is taken from the 1967 poem by Richard Brautigan (see below)
1. Love and Power. In the first episode, Curtis tracks the effects of Ayn Rand’s ideas on American financial markets, particularly via the influence on Alan Greenspan. This is the story of the dream that rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world. They would bring about a new kind of global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new democracy through the Internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems–without hierarchy.
2. The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts. This episode investigates how machine ideas such as cybernetics and systems theory were applied to natural ecosystems, and how this relates to the false idea that there is a balance of nature. Cybernetics has been applied to human beings to attempt to build societies without central control, self-organizing networks built of people, based on a fantasy view of nature. It has little to do with the real complexity of nature. It is based on cybernetic ideas that were projected on to nature in the 1950s by ambitious scientists. A static machine theory of order that sees humans, and everything else on the planet, as components–cogs–in a system.
3. The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey. This program looked into the selfish gene theory which holds that humans are machines controlled by genes, which was invented by Bill Hamilton. Adam Curtis also covered the source of ethnic conflict that was created by Belgian colonialism’s artificial creation of a racial divide and the ensuing slaughter that occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is a source of raw material for computers and cell phones. This episode looks at why we humans find this machine vision so beguiling. The film argues it is because all political dreams of changing the world for the better seem to have failed–so we have retreated into machine-fantasies that say we have no control over our actions because they excuse our failure.
All Watched Over
by Machines of Loving Grace
by Richard Brautigan
I’d like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labours
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]Adam Curtis is a documentary filmmaker, whose work includes The Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self, The Mayfair Set, Pandora’s Box, The Trap and The Living Dead.
Image 1: Cropped Image of a Young Man Working on his Laptop via Shutterstock
