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Comment by MarcScott | Hacker News Reader

I love Adam Curtis documentaries. The century of self, Power of nightmares, The trap and Hypernormalisation were all amazing. I might not agree with everything he says, but there is no denying that they are thought provoking, beautifully narrated and spectacularly well edited films.

If you haven't watched them yet, I would encourage you to do so.

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Especially relevant to the HN crowd is AC's "Machines of Loving Grace" [0], critiquing a sort of techno-utopianism endemic to Western culture generally, and Silicon Valley specifically. While I'm still bullish on technology (sometimes!) making the world a better place, AC's perspective provides an insightful counterpoint.

[0] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x60xjdl

I don't know if I'd call it pessimistic. I felt like he wanted to highlight how we've failed thus far at realizing the (techno-utopian) dreams of the early pioneers of computing. He wanted to show how technology was supposed to be a force to set us free, but somehow we lost our way, and by reminding us of that earlier vision we might be able to get back to work at realizing it.

Democracy + Capitalism was supposed to bring freedom to the world.. instead it bought domination, and realization, that it all comes down to who holds the power. The typical classical reality fundamentals.

Techno-utopianism was supposed to bring freedom to the world... instead it bought domination by the Big Tech, and realization that it all comes down to who holds the power. The classical reality fundamentals.

There are a few more cases.. it's Faust all over again, that turns into kind of a half-scam along the way to attract VC money or your money, then culminates into a power grab.

"The next revolution in X"!, blah, blah.. blahblah.. blah.

"We're no better than believing in or living in a Harry Potter novel sometimes" is more like his message - but it's a fact that societies like to look at the least of all facts. After all, that might prevent the next high-yield psychotic mass scam from occurring.

I don't know - I'm not a westerner, so perhaps it's "normal" for high IQ individuals to create or mis-use abstract mini-ideologies, mini-religions really, dress them as a New world, a Revolution really, to exploit individuals like workhorses over the span of many decades, until they realize that this was an illusion.

Btw we can't spin it like "Ooh, but if it wasn't for this silliness, we wouldn't have computers or the internet now". I disagree. You can't know that. Perhaps the ideology wasn't needed at all for technological development. Maybe it made for inspiration here and there, but that's it.

So.. I don't think that "try again" is his message at all. Watch more of his documentaries and it will become clear.

I see a lot of complaints about the dominance of big tech etc., but can you honestly say you’re less free in 2021 than in 2001? I’d say there’s a few things that could be done better but technology has really elevated all our lives. I think the biggest problem is the people that are left behind or don’t know how to use it all properly rather than the technology itself ... and at root these are sociopolitical ... and we’ve always had those problems but at least now we have many many good (as well as bad) platforms to discuss this stuff and promote change. And yes I do realise that some of this “discussion” is counterproductive at least recently but I think it’s important that these things get aired rather than fester, and the decision to dismiss these people from popular discussion is also a sociopolitical failure. Hopefully we are seeing the beginnings of a more unified approach in the last few weeks.

Techno utopianism can't really work under capitalism, because the machines will always be owned by a fraction of people who use them to enrich themselves.

>Democracy + Capitalism was supposed to bring freedom to the world.. instead it bought domination

I would say Democracy + Capitalism was supposed to bring freedom to the world.. instead it was used to bring domination. I don't think it had to happen that way because of some endemic property of Democracy and Capitalism. The same goes for other ideologies as well. And who is to say they were used to bring more domination than any other timeline which used other ideological frameworks?

Yes, that's fair. I'm going off of a fuzzy recollection, I haven't seen it in nearly a decade (and I was much more techno-utopian myself at the time; I remember feeling conflicted).

Setting aside the broader critiques of capitalism and materialism, I think the crux of the matter is that technology can only ever be a tool, and seldom represents an automatic win for humanist values on its own (and indeed, it can just as easily be co-opted by authoritarian governments, monopolistic corporations, ideologues, etc).

>AC's perspective provides an insightful counterpoint.

As the saying goes, nothing cools you down like AC.

This is my favorite documentary.

Also available here: https://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-lov...

This was fantastic - thanks for the recommendation. I had seen (and liked) some of his other documentaries but not heard of this series before.

His piece on conspiracies[1], mistrust of the ruling class and the early days of Rupert Murdock bugging conversations of powerful people is fascinating too.

He also did an interview after he snuck into Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones (yes that one). He maintained that Jones made up a bunch of stuff about what was going on there afterwards.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/8b69a786-56d5...

Are you not thinking of Jon Ronson sneaking into Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones?

Yes, indeed you're right, my apologies!

>> I love Adam Curtis documentaries.

Me too. But I think you have to enjoy them as a performance. People looking for historical detail and justification can be frustrated by his very broad sweeps.

When we're trying to make sense of things in the big picture, forest from the trees sort of thing, we have to take broad sweeps. We should be able to address counter-points when making high level arguments. Their existence doesn't mean broad sweeps are useless or incorrect.

Arguments in the weeds are disingenuous when they're not challenging the actual pattern. They believe to invalidate an argument as if by demonstrating an axiom in a mathematics proof false, when they may actually demonstrate ignorance of variance.

Adam Curtis films are horror movies to me. Existential horror, the worst kind. I haven't found conventional horror films to be scary since my mid-teens, but Adam Curtis knows how to keep me awake at night.

They're like Michel Foucault books, fascinating history with a clear slant that serves a central thesis.

Just watching Bitter Lake, fascinating one!

Bitter Lake's got to be my favorite!

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