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How We Got Programmed: Adam Curtis's 'All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace'

over the years, in his free-form documentary tours of the politics of science, consumerism, and fear, Adam Curtis has made the argument – in a way that manages to be digestible and awkwardly hilarious – that we are never as free as we think we are.

He started out as a producer on the zany BBC magazine show “That’s Life!” But over the years, in his free-form documentary tours of the politics of science, consumerism, and fear, Adam Curtis has made the argument – in a way that manages to be digestible and awkwardly hilarious – that we are never as free as we think we are. In his latest series of films, “All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace,” currently being shown in three parts on the BBC, he’s turned his attention to the promise of cyberspace, a topic simply begging for his medium-is-the-message critique: aside from the car, it’s hard to think of a technology that has been as pervasive – and as laden with expectation – as a tool for individual freedom and expression.

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The cyber-utopian argument – born in Silicon Valley long before the recent social-networked Arab revolutions – is that digital connections can make us more powerful individuals and liberate the world. Starting with a first installment that weaves a hypnotic, impressionistic portrait of how the impact of Ayn Rand’s hyper-rationalist, ego-centric world view spread like a silent viral meme, from the corner offices of Silicon Valley to the troubled Clinton White House to the collapsing streets of economically-ruined foreign countries and back, Curtis points to the subtle delusions that lie at the heart of our attachment to information technology. The web that was meant to bring us together, he argues, has also turned us into solipsistic little nodes within an idealized network. No, this isn’t your Twitter friend’s cyber-utopian critique. Bonus: this one’s festooned with nonchalantly hipster typefaces, and stars people like Alan Greenspan, systems theorist Jay Forrester, and Monica Lewinsky.

Curtis recently spoke to the Guardian about the series:

This has cultural expressions, as well as economic. We, and our feelings, are now the centre of everything – from reality TV to confessional memoirs to blogs. “There’s no one like, say, Tolstoy, who wrote of both man in his world and the architecture of his world,” Curtis says. “Now there is no context, just the feelings of one person. The philosophy of our time is summed up by Bill Murray sitting in a submarine in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic saying, ’We’re all a bit shit but that’s OK.’ We have no grand dreams. So of course we embrace a nice stable order.”

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One upside to the Internet: thanks to maverick uploaders, we’re able to watch the series on YouTube.

UPDATE: Well, of course not. BBC has asked the YouTube videos be removed. See the official website and try searching for a copy of the film on torrent sites.

UPDATE 2.0: Thanks to the wonderful Internet Archive, the videos can again be watched on your machine (h/t thewood)

UPDATE 3.0: The videos are now above and below, courtesy Vimeo.

Below, Parts 1, 2 and 3 (3 hrs total):

Part 2

Part 3

Connections:
Rushkoff’s Call to Program
Adam Curtis’s blog