All Watched
Over by
Machines of
Loving Grace
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is a 2011, three-part documentary made by Adam Curtis, for the BBC.
The three films trace the emergence of what might be called our current speculative, bio-mechanoid economy. Employing brilliantly cut-up found/archive footage, narrative tightness and horse’s mouth interviews, a world-wide history unfolds, both weird and deeply unsettling.
It is a “buzzing, blooming” evolution involving hippies, computer scientists, heads of state, bankers, liberals, mercenaries, conservatives, authors, biologists, and every stripe of utopian; all of whose irrationally exuberant faith in some version of stability (whether biological, computational, political or ideological) yields transcendental shortsightedness — continually plunging the globe into enslavement and chaos. Ultimately a masterly piece of film making — ingeniously assembled, intimate, frighteningly dark, and jauntily humorous — a staggeringly relevant construction. The horror! Oh the complexity!
1 — Love and Power
2 — The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts
3 — The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey
Additional resources
- The Medium and the Message (Adam Curtis blog)
- Ayn Rand and her influence on the Californian Ideology
-
Loren Carpenter Siggraph ‘91 Pong experiment
- Richard Barbrook & Andy Cameron, The Californian Ideology (1995)
- GBN / Alan Greenspan / Logical positivism / New Economy
- Pandora's Vox: On Community in Cyberspace (Carmen Hermosillo)
- Ecosystems, Arthur Tansley
- Jay Wright Forrester, feedback, MIT News
- Norbert Wiener: Cybernetics
- Eugene and Howard Odum: Ecology
- Buckminster Fuller: Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
- Synergia Ranch commune / Institute of Ecotechnics
- Richard Brautigan, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
- Systems ecology, George Van Dyne
- W. D. Hamilton in the Congo
- George Price, Equation for Altruism
- John von Neumann
- The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
This page is a tribute; it is not affiliated with Adam Curtis or the BBC
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