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CREATED:20111031T052300Z
DESCRIPTION:\nFilm evenings begin with potluck refreshments and social hour at  6:30 
 pm,\nfollowed by the film at  7:30 pm, followed by a discussion after the 
 film.\n\nAll Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace\nEpisode II\nby Adam 
 Curtis\n\nThis is a series of three documentary films by renown director 
 Adam Curtis about how humans have been colonized by the machines they have 
 built. Adam Curtis will show us that, although we don’t realize it, the 
 way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of computers. 
 His film series claims that computers have failed to liberate us and 
 instead have distorted and simplified our view of the world around 
 us.\n\nToday we see Episode II: The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts. 
 This is the story of how our modern scientific idea of nature, the 
 self-regulating ecosystem, is actually a machine fantasy. It has little to 
 do with the real complexity of nature.  It is based on cybernetic ideas 
 that were projected on to nature in the 1950s by ambitious scientists.  A 
 static machine theory of order that sees humans, and everything else on the 
 planet, as components — cogs — in a system.  In the 1960s the idea 
 penetrated deep into the public imagination that nature is a 
 self-regulating ecosystem — there is a natural order.  The idea was that 
 a natural ecosystem stabilizes the natural world via natural feedback 
 loops.  So the natural world is a stable system.  But the trouble is, this 
 is not true.  As many ecologists have shown by now, nature is never stable; 
  it’s always changing.\n\nAdam Curtis looks at how ecological theories 
 informed the growth of computer systems. He argues that, beginning with 
 Arthur Tansley in 1918, ecologists began to look at the natural world as a 
 mechanical system, in which all life forms naturally find their own 
 equilibrium over time. It was a concept that was later picked up by 
 pioneers in cybernetics, not least U.S. computer engineer Jay Forrester who 
 came up with an idea called “System Dynamics,” which was a means of 
 predicting behavior by building models of feedback loops. These models 
 treated everything like a smoothly running machine or like nodes in a 
 network — a reasonable assumption in the world of computers. A rival 
 theory was proposed by Jan Smuts who believed that hierarchies were what 
 made systems stable. Both men influenced concepts of the self-organizing 
 system in systems engineering, environmental studies, and studies of human 
 behavior — which fed into popular culture.\n\nThe idea of self-organizing 
 systems posits that individuals are equal players in a system where they 
 co-operate to achieve equilibrium and balance and that this balance is a 
 good thing.  There are no hierarchies or notions of coalitions and 
 alliances that compete for power.  The idea became popular in new fields of 
 science such as cybernetics and migrated to studies of nature where 
 biologists and ecologists alike believed that natural systems “strove” 
 for stability and after disasters or other disturbances could restore 
 themselves to their original balance.  The idea also became popular among 
 hippie counter-cultures in the West in the 1960s and many young people 
 established communes in which they all expected to live as equals in 
 harmony.  In fact, the fantasy of spontaneous, self-directed reform 
 movements erupting from youth remains attractive.  In the 1970s, biologists 
 and ecologists discovered that natural ecosystems don’t have an in-built 
 stability and that their earlier view of nature as an economic system was 
 wrong. Human societies that try to abolish hierarchies and alliances and 
 which sweep away old political and social institutions can become 
 authoritarian and bullying.  Ecosystems are chaotic, and almost impossible 
 to predict — not unlike the behavior of members in a hippy commune. Adam 
 Curtis suggests that such models are ineffective when applied to the 
 natural world or to human society.\n\nWheelchair accessible around the 
 corner at  411  28th  Street\n\n$5 donations are accepted\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/10/30/18696203.php
SUMMARY:All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
LOCATION:Humanist Hall\n390  27th  Street\nuptown Oakland, between Telegraph and 
 Broadway\nhttp://www.HumanistHall.org
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/10/30/18696203.php
DTSTART:20111124T033000Z
DTEND:20111124T053000Z
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