Episodes

1. Love and Power

In the first episode, Curtis tracks the effects of Ayn Rand's ideas on American financial markets, particularly via the influence on Alan Greenspan.

2. The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts

This episode investigates how machine ideas such as cybernetics and systems theory were applied to natural ecosystems, and how this relates to the false idea that there is a balance of nature. Cybernetics has been applied to human beings to attempt to build societies without central control, self organising networks built of people, based on a fantasy view of nature.

3. The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey

This programme looked into the selfish gene theory which holds that humans are machines controlled by genes which was invented by William Hamilton. Adam Curtis also covered the source of ethnic conflict that was created by Belgian colonialism's artificial creation of a racial divide and the ensuing slaughter that occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is a source of raw material for computers and cell phones.

Overview

We have been colonised by the machines we have built. Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers.

Details

Cast

Adam Curtis

Ayn Rand

Stewart Brand

Peder Anker

David Attenborough

Richard Brautigan

Bill Clinton

Richard Dawkins

Tord Björk

Daniel Botkin