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All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011)
- brudgers 9y agoI 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 labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. -- Richard Brautigen
- bitwize 9y agoMakes me think of Horizon: Zero Dawn.
- ableal 9y ago> watched over by machines of loving grace In SF, that poem would be what Iain M. Banks wrote of in the 'Culture' books - sort of "communism is A.I. plus electricity" ... From just the title, however, I was reminded of Jack Williamson's With Folded Hands - robots dutifully keeping humans from harm, by not allowing them to do anything.
- cestith 9y agoI was going to comment how upset I was that the article about the films didn't credit the title to Brautigan's influence. Thanks for posting the poem.
- Robotbeat 9y agoI love this reading of the poem. The images and soundtrack fit well, but the voice of Richard Brautigen himself is fantastic, very clear with that slight computer-generated, Stephen Hawking vibe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zlsCLukG9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zlsCLukG9A I just wish this poem and its reading were longer.
- lobster_johnson 9y agoMinor correction: It's Richard Brautigan.
- brudgers 9y agoIt's both, https://www.google.com/search?q=richard+brautigen https://www.google.com/search?q=richard+brautigen
- lobster_johnson 9y agoIt's not [1], though. All your search does it fix your misspelling: Showing results for "richard brautigan" Search instead for "richard brautigen" [1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Brautigan https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Brautigan
- brudgers 9y agoI apply the pragmatic maxim to spelling (and language in general and many other things). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_maxim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_maxim
- urethrafranklin 9y agoSo you're an intentional idiot, how quaint.
- Scipio_Afri 9y agoReally interesting documentary. I've heard good things about Adam Curtis's documentaries. He works, or at the very least use to, at the BBC and I remember reading a post if his on his blog where he saved something like 50 terabytes of rare unedited video of Afghanistan that was decades old, before and during it's Marxist revolution starting in the late 70's. Probably the most interesting of his documentaries that I've seen is on the rise of propaganda and the public relations industry in his documentary "Century of the Self". Link here: https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s
- krmboya 9y ago> Probably the most interesting of his documentaries that I've seen is on the rise of propaganda and the public relations industry in his documentary "Century of the Self". Yeah, I liked that too, the fact that PR is war-time propaganda repackaged for the corporate world.
- eternalban 9y agoFear porn designed to induce feelings of helplessness in guise of revelations.
- hellbanner 9y agoThat's what you took from it? (paraphrasing) US Gov, terrified by how an entire country unified with violent hatred (Nazi Germany), hired Freud's nephew for white-picket fence propaganda to keep "the beast" in American psyche buried. Or how cigarette companies hired him (Bernays) to turn women smoking cigarettes from huge social taboo to "sexy" -- look at recent movie, pop icons etc on how this one marketing stunt has impacted American culture. Sorry if you felt helpless after watching it. I found it informative and feel it contributed to my awareness of insidious advertising.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoWhen I watch Adam Curtis I always feel like he's so close to getting to something really good but never quite makes it. They are well produced docus though, you can tell that he has incorporated quite a few lessons from his study of propaganda.
- chevman 9y agoall the cities at once Pretend is a city bigger than New York, bigger than all the cities at once.
- brudgers 9y agoMy friend Bill turned my Brautigan this past spring. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/the-life-and-death-of-richard-brautigan-19850411 http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/the-life-and-de...
- abelhabel 9y agoI saw them all a few years ago and I highly recommend them. Adam Curtis's movies are more like long essays than documentaries but all worth watching.
- krmboya 9y ago> Adam Curtis's movies are more like long essays... Aha.. that's a good way of putting it.
- Cephlin 9y agoMe too, they were being aired as I was at university and our lecturer showed them to us. One of the best things I learnt at university was the existance of Adam Curtis and his documentaries! I love how he creates an amazing montage of footage taken from the BBC archives to help narrate his documentaries. He never creates new footage.
- krylon 9y ago> Adam Curtis's movies are more like long essays ... with a great soundtrack. ;-) Seriously, though, thinking of them as essays is a very good idea. When I hear documentary, I usually think of David Attenborough, fact-conveying kind of film. Curtis is more about ideas, and my usual reaction to his films is "Now that gave me a lot to think about."
- Angostura 9y agoObligatory. If you enjoy Adam Curtis, you should have a look at 'The Loving Trap of Pandora's Nightmares' - its only 3 minutes long and rather amusing. https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg
- taway_1212 9y agoHahaha, brilliant.
- zitterbewegung 9y agoI watched this documentary and I actually disliked the perspective he gave. As a person with an Bachelors Degree in Computer Science and I took an AI course I came from a position that for the most part Computers Improve society. While I was watching this I started to pick apart his viewpoint. As I have been to more AI ethics meetups I now think of ways to democratize data / AI instead. I may have forgotten his viewpoints in the documentary since it was awhile ago but now I am more inclined to agree with him.
- DonaldFisk 9y agoI've noticed that this is a problem with media coverage of subjects you know something about, which are aimed at a general audience.
- evanlivingston 9y agoCan you provide some examples of points you disagree with? I do feel like Curtis can be a touch hyperbolic at times, but that's also part of storytelling and I think it's especially important to strongly represent the viewpoints that are non-normative. I think of curtis much like michael moore, he gets a few things wrong sometimes but also offers a lot of insights. I've always wondered if electronic technics have decreased world suffering or expanded it. Will AI democratize power or concentrate it?
- zitterbewegung 9y agoHis storytelling method usually creates an idea of us vs them and its very black and white on who is causing the problem and the people being exploited. For example the combination of disciples of Ayn Rand and 60s counterculture group seems painted too broad of a brush. I think the group was bigger than those two groups and there were many more shades of grey instead of black and white.
- DonaldFisk 9y agoAll his documentary series are worth watching. These are Hypernormalisation Bitter Lake All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace Every Day is like Sunday The Power of Nightmares The Century of the Self The Trap Pandora's Box The Mayfair Set Inside Story Inquiry. The Great British Housing Disaster The last one is particularly relevant after the Grenfell Tower Fire.
- milcron 9y agoPandora's Box is my favorite introduction to Adam Curtis. In short, the theme is "times that people thought they knew what they were doing, but actually didn't."
- jmkni 9y agoWatching now, I've seen most of his stuff but oddly never watched this one, thanks.
- njloof 9y agoIn the context of Curtis I also like to point out James Burke's original "Connections" series. It's a deconstruction of history that is about ideas, rather than places and dates, and the first season is structured around the development of arguably the 20th century's most ambitious achievement (no spoilers:) The last episode is the most Curtis-esque in asking questions about managing human progress.
- bantunes 9y ago'Bitter Lake' is one of his harder to watch films. Still good, though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRbq63r7rys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRbq63r7rys
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- titzer 9y agoWe are not only being colonized by machines, we are becoming machines, and gladly. We are already acting like and being treated like idiots by our technology. In the car it is turn by turn navigation, on foot it is stumbling with our phones in our faces, for music it is auto-tuned, formulaic pop songs, for dance it is the robotic pop-and-lock dubstep moves that amaze us...we defend our heads with noise-canceling headphones the size of earmuffs, are interrupted every moment by smartwatches...we bumble from one mediated moment to the next, always alone, always accompanied by no one--just the glow of a screen or a hum, a talisman. We're not sane without checking our notifications, need entertainment...can't stand not watching something, can't stand dead space, can't stand our own thoughts, can't stand our own minds. Please take my mind over, AI, we constantly beg. Put us out of our misery and upload us to the digital nirvana. /yea I know hackernews ain't exactly the right place to blah that out there, but couldn't. stop. --karma
- psyc 9y agoHoping that AI can create a pleasant world seems roughly as reasonable as hoping that humans can evolve, however gradually, until they can create a pleasant world for themselves. Is it not? In the meantime, I'll cast my lot with creating a pleasant inner world.
- mikepurvis 9y agoI had a friend who posited that the Wall-E/Inception scenario would have been a far more interesting prequel backstory for The Matrix than what was actually presented in Reloaded and Revolutions. Basically, that the remaining "real world" humans were deluding themselves with this grand narrative of a lost war against the machines, when in fact it was humanity's own environmental screwups that blotted out the sky, and most people willingly submitted themselves to a simulated fantasy world that was set right before the collapse of civilization. And if there were multiple "one" persons or matrices or whatever, it was only to keep resetting the simulation and re-playing that golden period. Basically, you would turn the first movie on its head, where Morpheus becomes the character who has to question his world and assumptions, and break free from a tyranny of lies.
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- mgarfias 9y agoAm I the only one hoping this would be about the defunct industrial band?
- QuantumYeti 9y agoNope, there's a whole two of us!
- mark242 9y agoMike got the name from the poem.
- falcolas 9y agoMeta: Please, for the love of less-than-perfect eyesight, use more than 3.3 contrast ratio for 13px fonts. http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=8e8e8e&bcolor=ffffff http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=8e8e8e&b... On topic, this does seem like a video series I'll have to look at. Human/Machine interactions will only become more important as time goes on; it will be interesting to watch both the philosophy and the reality of it all evolve.
- devindotcom 9y agoOh, Adam Curtis is great. Bitter Lake and Hypernormalization are also well worth a watch. Didn't see this but I look forward to it!
- Z1515M8147 9y agoWhile we are on the subject, here is another video from the same site on becoming a machine. Stumbled across this lecture while looking for more Curtis documentaries and thought it was a very good guide through a cybernetics roadmap of the recent past, focusing on the work of Professor Kevin Warwick, who makes this subject quite entertaining and very accessible for the general/non-technical viewer. https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-cyborg-experiments/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-cyborg-experiments/
- iamcurious 9y ago>The film posits that it is perhaps as all past political dreams of changing the world for the better seem to have failed What about antibiotics? That seems like a clear case of changing the world for the better.
- ebcode 9y ago>What about antibiotics? That seems like a clear case of changing the world for the better. At first glance, yes, but then you remember that the universe is not static, but dynamic, constantly evolving, and the introduction of antibiotics, while useful --- miraculous, even --- at first, eventually results in "antibiotic-resistance"[0], and now we have a worse problem than the one we started with. There is a wonderful essay by Paul Kingsnorth, titled "Dark Ecology"[1] that identifies this pattern as a "progress trap". This quote from the Tao Te Ching is especially apt: "Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it? I do not believe it can be done." [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/ [1] https://orionmagazine.org/article/dark-ecology/ https://orionmagazine.org/article/dark-ecology/
- clock_tower 9y ago> a worse problem than the one we started with Bacterial infections are no longer a serious threat -- even bubonic plague has been brought under control. It's unlikely that bacteria will ever become fully immune to one or another antibiotic, but if that does happen we've still got penicillin, bacteriophages, and sterilization techniques; bacteria will never again be as dangerous as they were as recently as the late 1800s. For further clear-cut changes of the world for the better, there's smallpox eradication, the immanent eradication of guinea worms, the extirpation of polio from most of the world, and the development of anaesthesia.
- anigbrowl 9y agoI don't disagree, but bear in mind that 'better' involves a whole bunch of implicit assumptions. Some people think a more austere and purely Darwinian world would be better, and that humanity has gone soft. I don't agree, but try to get in the habit of examining your opinions from radically different perspective to realize how fundamentally subjective they are.
- komali2 9y ago>All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace is a series of films about how this culture itself has been colonised by the machines it has has built. The series explores and connects together some of the myriad ways in which the emergence of cybernetics—a mechanistic perspective of the natural world that particularly emerged in the 1970s along with emerging computer technologies—intersects with various historical events and visa-versa. The series variously details the interplay between the mechanistic perspective and the catastrophic consequences it has in the real world. This style of writing has always bothered me. I don't know how to describe it. College-writing? Like, "The series variously details the interplay between the mechanistic perspective..." What does this sentence actually mean? Surely there's a more efficient way to write it. At the very least by throwing out useless fluff like "variously."
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- joe_the_user 9y agoIt's basically using poetic flourishes to hide sloppy, simplistic thinking. Just like when the article accuses science of imposing machinery on nature (or something). "Part two shows how the modern scientific perspective of the natural world is actually a fantasy. It has little to do with the reality of nature. It is based on mechanistic ideas that were projected on to the natural world in the 1950s by scientists..." That's unfortunately par for the course in humanities. Occasionally that kind of language can be used to enhance good ideas but more often used to let artists have their feelings and not investigate further.
- beebmam 9y agoI have watched Adam Curtis' documentaries and understand the context of that quote. It's not wrong. Scientists have models for the natural world that are fantasies. Scientific models intentionally simplify reality in order to be able to analyze them. It is arguable with our current understanding of reality that a perfect model of an aspect of reality will never be possible with quantum uncertainty. Most of what you've said in your comment is non sequitur, and I suggest you edit it out.
- carapace 9y agoTiny sans-serif light grey font mean you hate your readers' eyes. This site hates your eyes.
- uxhacker 9y agoFuture Shock by Alvin Toffler in 1972 narrated by Orson Welles is well worth adding to the list of documentaries to watch. Much of what Toffler/Welles touch is very relevant now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU
- anigbrowl 9y agoAlso The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, which will just be completely weird to most viewers at first.
- hasbroslasher 9y agoAlright, time for another rant: Curtis sees the connection between machines, hierarchies, capitalism, and technology. Curtis aptly points out that in our world, technology has not bred equality, that rather, the very concept of ownership spits in the eye of non-hierarchical society. I also question the degree to which Silicon Valley types fundamentally believe in (socioeconomic) equality - while Rand supporters often invoke freedom, liberty, justice, etc. they generally fail to mention equality at all. Instead, they opt for lofty "rising tide" rhetoric or relate back to a "free and open web". However, Curtis is dead right about the type of fantasy that technological progress has given our world. This fantasy - that if we just keep pushing forward, we can solve our problems belies a fundamental, inherent fallacy in late-capitalistic logic. That is: when the problems are necessary parts of the system, it is impossible for the system to solve them. Current nation-state-capitalism relies on a few tenets that cause many of our planet's problems. Nations and people must compete, rather than cooperate. Growth must always continue, lest we face stagnation. Property and the means of acquiring wealth must not be equally distributed, in fact, such distribution would be inherently immoral. The last point here is explicitly Randian and is at the heart of global society's moral compass. That what one man has, no other has a right to take, regardless of how that property was acquired. Thus it is wrong for Palestine to contest the land given to Israel at the end of the 2nd World War, it is wrong for young black men and women to stand on the bridges that wealthy San Franciscans take to work, it is wrong for the government to appropriate the wealth of Mark Zuckerberg - despite the fact that his idea and wealth was ostensibly stolen from others. The fantasy of a "free web" can be only be recognized in its relation to property and ownership. While megacorps like Google and Facebook make lofty claims about freedom, they unequivocally deny that the rest of the web ought to have access to their data, their infrastructure, their systems. They support the laws that make hacking illegal, and in many cases, prove two-faced about what they really want: a free web, but with some limitations that favor them. Google, for instance, supports net neutrality but does not have any interest in limiting their own ability to profit off the web. What we end up with is a "free society" where the ultimate arbiters of justice are not beholden to society in any way - capable of setting their own rules and saying "you may enter if ..."
- sgt101 9y agoMy response would be that you are casting society and societal organisation in terms of absolutes and extremes. Some people - Rand for example - believe that all redistribution is always wrong and immoral. Some people participate in this fantasy. Many, many people don't, many many people pay taxes happily, and vote for taxes because they realise that redistribution prevents poverty and promotes social harmony - due to ensuring that there is a minimal population of murderous starving feral children. Many nations do not compete all the time, many nations co-operate and support each other, most of the time. At the same time most people see elastic limits in redistribution of wealth, space, time and privilege. For example it is widely believed that it's ok for less privileged groups to take public space and media time to protest and illustrate the injustice that has placed them in extremis. However to do so to the extent that others cannot care for their children or enjoy their basic rights - safety, shelter, is unacceptable. Isaiah Berlin is a good read.
- joosters 9y agoAs well as the long multi-part documentaries, Adam Curtis wrote short five minute clips for the show NewsWipe, which are also worth watching, e.g. his talk about news reporting and "oh dearism" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok
- clock_tower 9y agoJust going off the summary of part 1, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of this. Every cultural voice in the US -- except a few eccentric Greens -- was pro-computer-revolution; the Left wanted decentralization and freedom, while the Right wanted prosperity and anti-Communism. Neither major side in the US saw surveillance capitalism coming. If the author's trying to absolve the Left of responsibility for surveillance capitalism, he's wasting his time -- think of Apple Computer, the Free Software Foundation, 37signals.com, and the whole close association of computers (especially personal computers) with the counterculture... He also enumerates the following goals that the personal-computing revolution was after: * No economic risk or failure * No boom-bust cycle * Decentralized political power * Democracy * Connectedness * Non-hierarchy * Pursuit of self-interest * Desire to improve the world Which of these does he think we shouldn't have pursued? Which of them does he think are bad? If you oppose all of them, you're asking to live in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, and not even the neo-reactionaries want _that_.
- devindotcom 9y agoAt the risk of sounding glib, watching the documentary itself would answer your questions, no? If you're interested in the topic, as you seem to be, they are likely worth your time.
- clock_tower 9y ago> watching the documentary itself would answer your questions, no? I'm definitely feeling engaged, but not entirely enthusiastic... (EDIT: But I feel like I'm picking a fight with you, and I apologize for that. I'll definitely give this documentary a shot!) Part 1 sounds like the fascist mode of thinking: "all our intractable emergent problems are due to an evil conspiracy of outsiders in our midst, with an inexplicable desire to destroy the world!" The whole problem with Ayn Rand is that she tried too hard to be anti-communist and accidentally turned fascist; seeing her followers pointed to as a fascist-style internal outgroup is as depressing as it is silly. As for the other two parts -- tearing down the Gaia hypothesis and the Selfish Gene -- what does he think are the right things to think, if these are the wrong things? Are we going to just start pretending that the establishment Left was always anti-hippie, now that hippieness has turned out to have nasty emergent consequences? I'm particularly annoyed that he blames the Congo situation on the Selfish Gene. The establishment likes to pretend that the Congo is too complicated to understand -- because the alternative is owning up to how the French backed the Hutus during and after the Rwandan genocide, and how the international community is still more sympathetic to the Hutus than the Tutsis. (See also the allegedly inexplicable causes of WWI.)
- zabuni 9y agoI think every Adam Curtis documentary link should also have this appended to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg
- hellbanner 9y ago"Machines that make us smart" argues that what makes us human is not that we can build machines, or that machines = intelligence but that human + machine = intelligent system. By Don Normal, ex Apple designer. https://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Make-Smart-Attributes/dp/0201626950 https://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Make-Smart-Attributes/dp/... https://msu.edu/course/cep/900/readings/NormanChap3.pdf https://msu.edu/course/cep/900/readings/NormanChap3.pdf (Sample chapter)
- wyclif 9y agoIt's only a matter of time until one of these things kills a person.
- intopieces 9y agoI was fortune enough to catch a screening of this at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX for $3. It was my first exposure to Adam Curtis, and I have been hooked ever since. His work is hypnotic, unnerving sometimes, misleading / biased often, but always a good jumping off point for exploring ideas and people on your own. I read a description of his latest, "Hypernormalization," the was something like "a three hour journey through 100 wikipedia tabs" and it perfectly described his documentaries. They start with a basic premise but then veer wildly through topics whose links are tenuously held together by their relation to each other + stock footage and great music.