All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace: great new BBC2 series

If you missed the first part of documentary-maker Adam Curtis’ new BBC2 series last night, catch it on iplayer while you can. It’s wonderful: a fabulous, high octane, skillfully-edited mix of politics, philosophy, technology and cyberspace.

I’m gutted to admit that I’d never heard of cult novelist Ayn Rand before, nor her ideas around “objectivism” – a kind of laissez faire capitalism, enabled by machines (if I had, she would have definitely featured in Monkeys with Typewriters).

The fact that Rand was a major influence on Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States, is an eye-opener. And this programme makes a strong connection between her ideas, Greenspan’s undermining of the global economy and, ultimately, the 2008 stock market crash.

Brilliant stuff.

Watch it – watch it now!

May 24, 2011

Mark Hendy said...

I'm a fan of Rand and yes, I've read Atlas Shrugged. I think it's important to point out that Greenspan didn't set out to deliberately undermine the global economy. In fact it was the opposite of Rand's thinking on free trade in that Greenspan allowed the market to be manipulated by a greedy minority with self interested financial motivation. Rand's philosophy was by all means put yourself first, but do no harm to others. The position Greenspan ended up in was not founded on that principle. Just saying..... :)

May 27, 2011

Jemima Gibbons said...

Thanks for the clarification Mark :)

You're right - it's a complex issue and maybe it would have been fairer to have gone into more detail about Greenspan who I don't necessarily think is a bad man. The *final* outcome of his actions (to date) is that the global economy was undermined and we were plunged into recession. But it was a long journey with many players and yes, certainly not Greenspan's intention to have ended up this way.

Not in any way related to the last comment, but Susan Frost has kindly pointed me in the way of a great podcast talk by Adam Curtis at The Story earlier this year http://bit.ly/kUVOUy - thanks Susan!

Monkeys with typewriters