kenoma wrote:If you don't want to torrent: I use
Expat shield, which gives you a UK IP address for watching BBC iplayer. Windows only. Turn it off when doing anything else.
Must say I was underwhelmed by this first episode.
I'll
try and summarize the argument, such as it is (maybe you shouldn't read this if you haven't seen it):
The target is a Randian cybernetic utopianism which came to the fore in the early eighties, and which promises to harmonize untrammeled individualism in an optimally rational hivemind. We love and believe in markets just as we love and believe in computers, because both promise this utopia. But rational individualism is an oxymoron: we're essentially frail and irrational as individuals. We can't stop doing things that are irrational, that go against our own interests and/or the cybernetic whole. So we become intensely jealous (Ayn Rand); we shag interns (Clinton); we ignore our better judgement about 'irrational exuberance' when it's unpopular (Greenspan). The virus eating away at the system of rational individualism is our very irrational faith that this system will always run smoothly, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
Into this mix is thrown firstly the East Asian crisis and subsequent IMF pillaging, and then the 2008 credit crisis and subsequent response. They both somehow manifest this irrational faith in computer algorithms as harbingers of absolute individual freedom...
I'm being generous here though, because the connection between these events and the central thesis of the documentary is pretty damn tenuous, and mostly left up to your imagination. So are other connections - I can guess, but never really know why the Lewinsky scandal is important in all this. I half-understand why Curtis has to pretend that Clinton was surprised at having to implement massive cuts on entering office; but I know it's patent bullshit. That internet personae commodify the 'individual' is true and interesting... but what this has to do with Greenspan and Rand, I'm not sure.
In short, it's all a bit of a mess. Diehard fans might say this is the point, that it's an evocative, suggestive mess. Its incoherence is fertile ground for an open-ended discussion of the themes it raises. But I wonder whether anything more than aesthetic pleasures are being satisfied here. I wonder what kind of conversations and arguments this documentary will really generate, beyond a kind of slack-jawed admiration of its ambition.
And there is a real problem here, because the documentary effectively validates two rather nasty bits of propaganda:
1)
The people in charge - your Greenspans, your Clintons, your IMFs - are essentially motivated and blinkered by their sincere belief in misguided ideas. It's not that they
actively seek to maximise their own material wealth at the expense of a global majority whom they regard as scum. Not at all: they really, sincerely believe Randian objectivism and cybernetic utopianism will lead to the best of all possible worlds. They just haven't been appraised of the downsides yet. (That these beliefs justify and enable massive self-enrichment is purely coincidental, and of no relevance here)
2)
An irrational faith in computer algorithms amongst Wall St firms caused the current financial crisis. D'oh! Please ignore obvious evidence of foreknowledge of the crisis. Forget about the massively lucrative TBTF state bailouts which
no computer could have predicted. Pay no heed to the incredible concentration of wealth which has only increased since the 2008 crisis. The quants fucked up! We didn't want it to happen this way, honest!
