I’ve been watching these Adam Curtis documentaries for inspiration. They’ve been really thought provoking and given me an interesting perspective on the relationship between humans an machines throughout history.
I didn’t take notes during the first episode, but I started jotting things down during the second one. See below:
Adam Curtis – All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace 2/3 – The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts – Subs Español Span from avefenix1954 on Vimeo.
Notes:
- The brain is an electric machine (mind/brain dualism?)
- Equilibrium:
- systems tend to stabilize themselves
- Feedback loops
- Computers can analyze the true effects of our actions
- SYSTEMS!
- Early warning systems (Forrester)
- Cybernetics
- From a computer’s perspetive, humans are no different than machines
- Howard Odum: Cybernetics as a tool to analyze nature
- Ecosystems as electrical circuits
- Use this to decide when we have to interfere in the ecosystem
- Fundamentals of Ecology
- “Spaceship Earth”
- Building domes out of parts that are weak in themselves, but strong when they are connected (Like Epcot center)
- This is like nature… would that work for society? Would we be stronger when networked?
- Changes human perspective to spaceship-centric, not human-centric
- Ecotechnics
- Communes (man/machine systems)
- No hierarchy
- Manifesto “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace”
- Limits of Growth(Forrester’s cybernetic world model)
- No politics
- We don’t need more growth, we need to stabilize and maintain the planet as is
- This idea of natural equilibrium is actually just a political ploy to keep western whites in power
- Shift away from enlightenment (subjectivity)–rather than that, humans are cogs in the system
- New ecology: nature isn’t actually stable/in equilibrium, but ever-changing
- Disturbance to system sets the system into a new trajectory; it doesn’t re-set itself to its original state.
- Van Dyne(?) tried to recreate an entire ecosystem in a computer
- monitored every aspect of plains animals/environment, recorded what antelope ate, hole in bison stomach…
- Submodels for animals/insects
- When put int the computer, no pattern emerged! Thought it was because he didn’t have enough data, but actually the other reason there was a patter in the first place is because previous scientists simplified nature so much
- Self-organizing networks
- internet-driven revolution (Twitter/Facebook)
- Doesn’t allow for organized opposition to oppression