All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (3/3)

This is the last episode in a series of documentaries by Adam Curtis. It focus on the idea of humans being machines.

Adam Curtis – All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace 3/3 – The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey – Subs from avefenix1954 on Vimeo.

Notes:

  • Humans are self-replicating machines
  • War in Africa over minerals used to manufacture Play Station 2 (copper)
  • What are humans, from a gene’s point of view? (Bill Hamilton & George Price)
    • bodies are carriers for genes
    • genes are machines
    • genes would destroy themselves if it let more related copies of the gene live (this explains altruism)
    • Price’s suicide as an act of free will
  • Concept of humans as machines demolishes the enlightenment idea of people being more important than things
    • death of subjectivity
  • Is technological evolution analogous to animal evolution?
    • new objects studying old objects (living-with-gorillas-style)
  • “Humans as machines” idea just an excuse to explain away our failure to change the world for the better