All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

This is the story of a dream. A dream of a perfect world where computers deliver economic and political stability. Of an internet that enables a new kind of democracy. No more boom or bust, no economic crashes; pure human connectivity with no hierarchy. In his captivating visual style, documentary-maker Adam Curtis explores the hope of a technological Utopia, and how it would never be our reality.

What do 20th-century ecologists and the 21st-century engineers of the internet and social-media age have in common? Answer: a misunderstanding of how nature works. Adam Curtis posits how the idea of a stable, non-hierarchical ecosystem informed how computer systems and social-media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter were built… but failed to factor chaos and unpredictability into the equation.

Adam Curtis’s strength as a documentarian is in connecting seemingly disparate moments in human history and finding a link that alters our understanding of the world. Here, he throws new light on human nature by connecting the theory of scientist Bill Hamilton – that humans are machines controlled by genes (popularised by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene) – with years of conflict in the Congo.