TV Eye: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Via the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis:

This series of films investigates how people have been colonized by the machines they have built.

Although they may not realize it, the way many people see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers. Not just politics and the economy — but also in the way bodies, minds, and even the whole of the natural world are perceived.

The underlying argument is that people have given up a dynamic political model of the world — the dream of changing things for the better — for a static machine ideology that says everyone is a component in a system, and that the aim is to manage these systems and keep them stable.

From the utopian visions of the worldwide web to the idea of an interconnected global economic system, to the dream of balanced ecosystems, all these ideas share an underlying machine vision of organization and order.

The films tell an extraordinary range of stories: from novelist Ayn Rand and her tragic love affairs to the dreams and the frightening reality of the hippie communes; from the brutal politics of the Belgian Congo to the doomsday computer model behind the rise of modern environmentalism; from the lonely suicide in a London squat of the mathematical genius who invented the selfish gene theory to Alan Greenspan and his faith in a new kind of global economic system. And there’s also the computer model of the eating habits of the Pronghorn antelope.

The series argues that by embracing this new machine ideology something very precious has been given up: the idea of progress and political struggle to change the world for the better.

Episode One – Love and Power (premiered May 23, 2011 on BBC Two):

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 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 kind of democracy through the internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems – without hierarchy.

The film tells the story of two perfect worlds. One is the small group of disciples around the novelist Ayn Rand in the 1950s. They saw themselves as a prototype for a future society where everyone could follow their own selfish desires. The other is the global utopia that digital entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley set out to create in the 1990s. Many of them were also disciples of Ayn Rand. They believed that the new computer networks would allow the creation of a society where everyone could follow their own desires, yet there would not be anarchy. They were joined by Alan Greenspan who had also been a disciple of Ayn Rand. He became convinced that the computers were creating a new kind of stable capitalism – “Like a New Planet”, he said.

But the dream of stability in both worlds would be torn apart by the two dynamic human forces – love and power.

As always when watching films on Youtube this is broken into multiple parts. We’ve embedded parts one and two of episode one with links to the other three parts below the videos. We’ve also included links to all five parts of episode two, which is entitled The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts. The third and final episode - The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey - airs this Monday on BBC Two.

Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Episode Two: The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Read: The 18 Most Suppressed Inventions Ever

Nikolai Tesla, presumably trying to figure out how it all went so wrong

Throughout history there have been countless attempts to discourage new technologies only to protect other people’s self-interests. From Gawker’s list of the 18 most suppressed technologies here are two we felt stood out both because of their far-reaching implications and the absurdity that surrounded their suppression.

#4: Nikolai Tesla’s Dream of Free Energy

Nikola Tesla was more than just the inspiration for a hair metal band, he was also an undisputed genius. In 1899, he figured out a way to bypass fossil-fuel-burning power plants and power lines, proving that “free energy” could be harnessed using ionization in the upper atmosphere to produce electrical vibrations. J.P. Morgan, who had been funding Tesla’s research, had a bit of buyer’s remorse when he realized that free energy for all wasn’t as profitable as, say, actually charging people for every watt of energy use. Morgan then drove another nail in free energy’s coffin by chasing away other investors, ensuring Tesla’s dream would die.

To learn more about Tesla, his life, his work and those who opposed his dream of free energy watch “The Missing Secrets of Nikola Tesla”, which is actually an episode from a 1998 show that took an in-depth look at topics from de-classified government documents called Phenomenon: The Lost Archives.

#11 Cold Fusion

Billions of dollars have been spent researching how to create energy using controlled “hot fusion,” a risky and unpredictable line of experimentation. Meanwhile, garage scientists and a fringe group of university researchers have been getting closer to harnessing the power of “cold fusion,” which is much more stable and controllable, but far less supported by government and foundation money. In 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced that they had made a breakthrough and had observed cold fusion in a glass jar on their lab bench. To say the reaction they received was chilly would be an understatement. CBS’s 60 Minutes described how the resulting backlash from the well-funded hot-fusion crowd sent the researchers underground and overseas, where within a few years their funding dried up, forcing them to drop their pursuit of clean energy.

For more info watch this episode of Phenomenon: The Lost Archives entitled “Heavy Watergate: The War Against Cold Fusion“.

Read the rest Gawker’s list here

News in Notes: April 7, 2011

• A senior Federal Reserve official warned recently that America is going broke as fears grow the Libyan bombardment could cost more than $1 billion. The first day of Operation Odyssey Dawn had a price tag of well over $100 million for the U.S. in missiles alone, according to estimates. More coverage from Reuters and ABC News.

• ‘Libya war could last 30 years‘ says UK Armed Forces minister in an extraordinary admission which sounds terrible but is still more optimistic than NATO’s assessment of a war without end.

• Rebel fighters claimed NATO airstrikes blasted their forces Thursday in another apparent mistake that sharply escalated anger about coordination with the military alliance in efforts to cripple Libyan forces.

• Two former Afghan Mujahedeen and a six-year detainee at Guantanamo Bay are leading the rebel’s military campaign against infiltrators loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi. Which is confusing because the rebels we’re supporting in Libya are the same Islamic extremists we’ve been trying to eradicate for over a decade.

• How could the situation get any worse in Libya? Queue the CIA. At least one former CIA analyst thinks going to Libya was a poor choice.

• “There’s no business like war business” says author Pepe Escobar in an article for Asia Times.

• The U.S. military is developing software they’re calling “Sock Puppet” that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda. Paying bureaucrats to troll around on Facebook sounds like money well spent.

• Repubelicans and Democraps can’t agree on what they disagree on so the government will partially shutdown come Friday. Read about what it means for you here. More coverage here.

• Japan’s ocean radiation hits 7.5 million times legal limit.

• Company whose rig caused the biggest oil spill in U.S. history rewards executives for “best year in safety performance”. Sounds about right…

• Speaking of oil companies, guess who wants to starting drilling in the Gulf of Mexico again? Say it with me…BP.

• NPR explains how offshore tax havens save companies like Google, Pfizer, Microsoft and Facebook billions. For example, GE made $5.1 billion from their operations in the U.S. alone. Guess how much they paid in taxes? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

• A small Maine town is the first to declare food sovereignty. In short, the ordinance allows buyer and seller to enter their own agreement which overrides the regulation of the federal or state government when dealing with transactions involving local foods.

• Banks profit by processing a vast number of homes into foreclosure as quickly as possible.  In some cases, financial institutions paid contract companies who employed an army of “robo-signers” – office workers who forged signatures on mortgage documents that were then used to initiate foreclosures.

• Chinese artist, activist and social critic Ai Weiwei is being detained by the Chinese government for “economic crimes” otherwise known as having the balls to speak out against a repressive regime. Check out Weiwei’s work here.

• Obama is running for President again. Watch a funny parody of Obama’s lame ad here.

• The on-going treatment of Bradley Manning, the former U.S. soldier who allegedly gave Wikileaks’ a trove of information, while being held in prison on 24 charges was called  ‘ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid’ recently by P. J. Crowley, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton who was later fired for that remark.  Currently Manning is being held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day in a cell with no natural light, is not a allowed to sleep during the day, has his clothes taken at night and has serious restrictions on his visitation rights.  Sadly 20,000 prisoners across America receive that same treatment everyday.

Photo File: Lu Guang

On October 14, 2009, Lu Guang of the People’s Republic of China won the $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his documentary project Pollution in China. (via China Hush)

An elder shepherd by the Yellow River cannot stand the smell. April 23, 2006

In Guiyu, Guangdong province, the rivers and reservoirs have been contaminated, the villager is doing her washing in this seriously polluted pond. November 25, 2005

Mr. Lu was born in 1961 in Zhejiang Province and was taking pictures before his 20th birthday, when he worked in a factory. He studied at the fine arts academy at Tsinghua University in Beijing from 1993 to 1995 and has concentrated on social and economic issues in his work since then. In 2003, his pictures of peasants in Henan Province who had been infected with HIV after selling their blood won the first prize for a story about contemporary issues from World Press Photo. (via NY Times)

See more of Guang’s work here

In Ma’anshan, Anhui province, along the Yangtze River there are many small-scaled iron factories and plastic processing plants, which discharge large amounts of sewage  into the Yangtze River. June 18, 2009

Hebei Province Shexian Tianjin iron and steel plant produces a massive amount of pollution. Company scale continues to grow, seriously affecting the lives of local residents. March 18, 2008

Watch: oops

Chris Beckman’s hypnotic short film “oops” is composed solely of YouTube videos in which people drop their cameras. I promise it’s more entertaining than the description makes it sound. “oops” was the winner of the 2010 Vimeo Awards in the experimental category.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .