Technology, Innovation, and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Figure 1. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, 2011. Found image.

This weeks readings on Hardware/Software/Wetware and Technology compelled me to seek out further information on what Geoffrey Winthrop-Yong’s claims as the “coupling of humans and technology,” and “the rise of the computers and the rise of systems” (CTMS, 2010, 196). Here Winthrop-Tong suggests that “computers are an extremely powerful tool precisely because it closes itself off from its user” (CTMS, 2010, 196-197).

Figure 2. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, 2011.

Adam Curtis in his BBC documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (see Fig. 1), provides another perspective lens on the social and political world of technology, where computers fail to liberate humanity becoming mainstream tools simplifying the world around us (see Fig. 2). In the first episode Curtis outlines theorist Ayn Rand’s notions that computer networks are innovative, stabilizing societies, ultimately helping people work for their own happiness, by radical individualism nonetheless.

Winthrop-Tong final words in chapter 14 offer another jumping point on the coupling of technology and humanity. He suggests that contemporary theorists agree that “the evolution of life and the recent accelerated development of technology [are indeed] the same terms: as the evolution of information processing itself” (CTMS, 2010, 211-212).

Works Cited

All watched over by machines of loving grace. BBC2, 2011.

Mitchell, WJ Thomas, and Mark BN Hansen, eds. Critical terms for media studies. University of Chicago Press, 2010.