
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011) - sajid
http://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/
======
titzer
We 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

~~~
mikepurvis
I 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.

~~~
Jun8
Precisely! However, if you think about it, the Matrix Trilogy does not
contradict this notion. Many people believe the "real world" presented is in
fact another layer of the Matrix, otherwise, how would Neo have superpowers in
that world (among other issues)?

I hope this is taken up in a fourth movie.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Many people believe the "real world" presented is in fact another layer of
> the Matrix, otherwise, how would Neo have superpowers in that world (among
> other issues)?

Short answer: WiFi

Longer answer: For reasons (probably involving systems of control, because,
hey, it's the Matrix), in addition to the high-bandwidth wired connections,
the implants in humans attached to the matrix also include lower-bandwidth
wireless units, and the machines (obviously) have wireless network connections
to coordinate mobile units. Neo can hack machines (or formerly Matrix-
connected humans) via his (and their) wireless interfaces, giving him
“superpowers” in the physical world.

------
brudgers

      I 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

~~~
lobster_johnson
Minor correction: It's Richard Brautig _a_ n.

~~~
brudgers
It's both,
[https://www.google.com/search?q=richard+brautigen](https://www.google.com/search?q=richard+brautigen)

~~~
lobster_johnson
It'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
I 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
So you're an intentional idiot, how quaint.

------
Angostura
Obligatory. 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
Hahaha, brilliant.

------
Scipio_Afri
Really 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)

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
When 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.

~~~
digi_owl
I think its because he never sets out to be prescriptive, only descriptive, if
that makes any sense.

------
komali2
>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."

~~~
joe_the_user
It'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
I 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.

~~~
komali2
>Most of what you've said in your comment is non sequitur, and I suggest you
edit it out.

I believe this is unnecessarily rude. I appreciated the content of your
comment but I feel your mild personal attack devalues it.

~~~
beebmam
I don't. It wasn't a personal attack. I think he jumps to conclusions that are
unwarranted, and I'm asking him to kindly edit them out. In no way did I
attack his person.

~~~
sgt101
In the same spirit I perceive that you that telling people to remove comments
that you don't agree with reduces my opportunities to read and consider them.
Please refrain from doing this.

------
zitterbewegung
I 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.

~~~
evanlivingston
Can 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
His 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
All 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
Pandora'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
Watching now, I've seen most of his stuff but oddly never watched this one,
thanks.

------
abelhabel
I 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.

~~~
krylon
> 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."

------
hasbroslasher
Alright, 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
My 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.

------
devindotcom
Oh, Adam Curtis is great. Bitter Lake and Hypernormalization are also well
worth a watch. Didn't see this but I look forward to it!

------
zabuni
I 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)

------
bantunes
'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)

------
intopieces
I 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.

------
hellbanner
"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/...](https://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Make-Smart-
Attributes/dp/0201626950)

[https://msu.edu/course/cep/900/readings/NormanChap3.pdf](https://msu.edu/course/cep/900/readings/NormanChap3.pdf)
(Sample chapter)

------
Z1515M8147
While 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/)

------
joosters
As 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)

------
uxhacker
Future 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
Also _The Society of the Spectacle_ by Guy Debord, which will just be
completely weird to most viewers at first.

------
iamcurious
>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
>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
> 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
I 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.

~~~
clock_tower
(Sorry for the late response!)

"Better" here just involves the assumptions that pain is worse than not pain,
and that human life is intrinsically valuable. I'm fine with making both
assumptions -- especially since I've read Timothy Snyder's _Black Earth: the
Holocaust as History and Warning_, which explores the thought of the most
famous proponent of the mankind-needs-more-Darwinian-selection-pressure
alternative. "I disagree with Hitler" isn't exactly compelling evidence for
"my opinions are fundamentally subjective."

(I'm also of the opinion that the earth isn't flat, and that both sides of a
contradiction can't be true. In those cases, too, I'm comfortable with saying
that those who disagree with me are wrong -- and in uninteresting ways, too.)

------
carapace
Tiny sans-serif light grey font mean you hate your readers' eyes. This site
_hates_ your eyes.

------
wyclif
It's only a matter of time until one of these things kills a person.

------
chevman
all the cities at once

Pretend is a city bigger than New York, bigger than all the cities at once.

~~~
brudgers
My friend Bill turned my Brautigan this past spring.
[http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/the-life-and-
de...](http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/the-life-and-death-of-
richard-brautigan-19850411)

------
falcolas
Meta: 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&b...](http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=8e8e8e&bcolor=ffffff)

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.

------
mgarfias
Am I the only one hoping this would be about the defunct industrial band?

~~~
mark242
Mike got the name from the poem.

~~~
mgarfias
Yes I know.

I was hoping they reformed or something when I saw the title.

~~~
mark242
Nope, sorry. You might be interested in Mike's solo album --
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/fellow-
prisoners/id5013550](https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/fellow-
prisoners/id5013550)

------
clock_tower
Just 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
At 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
> 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.)

