All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, by Adam Curtis, explores how humans have become colonised by the machines they have constructed over the years. Rather than liberating humankind, it argues that computers have distorted our perception of the world, and that this often goes unnoticed because we now see almost everything through the lens of machines. The documentary series consists of three parts:

– 1. Love and Power: An investigation into the impact of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy on the US stock market, particularly through its influence on former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

– 2. The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts: A look at the folly of applying machine-based concepts such as cybernetics and systems theory to natural ecosystems.

– 3. The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey: An exploration of why humans find machines so enchanting, drawing on biology’s ‘selfish gene’ theory, which holds that we are all ‘soft machines’ guided by our genes’ impulses.