All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

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  1. Love and Power

  60m

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

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  2. The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts

  60m

  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.

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

  59m

  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.

Cast

Adam Curtis

Self - Narrator (voice)

Ayn Rand

Stewart Brand

Self

No photo

Peder Anker

Self

David Attenborough

Self

Richard Brautigan

Self

Bill Clinton

Self

Richard Dawkins

Self

No photo

Tord Björk

Self

No photo

Daniel Botkin

Self

No photo

Barbara Branden

Self

No photo

Nathaniel Branden

Self