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MUSIC: "Baby Love Child"
by Pizzicato Five

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# When I see you, my love

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# I see what's in your mind

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# You own me, yes you do

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# You don't need to tell me

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# I know you love me most

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# No-one else take my place

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# You need me, yes you do

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# For ever and ever

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# We are in love

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# Baby love child

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# I take you so high

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# Groovy love child

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# Give me a kiss

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# Baby love child

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# Do it again... #

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In the mass democracies of the West,
a new ideology has risen up.

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We have come to believe that
the old hierarchies of power

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can be replaced
by self-organising networks.

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From internet utopianism,
to the global economic system,

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and above all,
the ecosystems of the natural world.

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Today we dream of systems that can
balance and stabilise themselves

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without the intervention
of authoritarian power.

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But in reality,
this is the dream of the machines.

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It reflects how they are organised.

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It has nothing to do with nature,

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and as a model for human society
and for politics,

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it is wholly inadequate in the face
of the powerful, dynamic forces

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that really dominate
the world today.

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This is the story of the rise of the
dream of the self-organising system

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and the strange machine fantasy
of nature that underpins it.

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CMOL is...

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..is a... In a sense
it's a high-level language.

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Very, very close to machine language,
time-coded machine language.

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VOICE FADES OUT UNDER STATELY MUSIC

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At the end of the First World War,

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a young biologist called Arthur
Tansley had a frightening dream.

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He dreamt he was in
an African village.

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The natives
started to come towards him.

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Then his wife appeared.

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He picked up a rifle, aimed it
at her, and pulled the trigger.

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Tansley wanted to know
what the dream meant,

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so he started to study
the ideas of Sigmund Freud,

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and he became fascinated.

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In 1922, he even went to Vienna
to be analysed by Freud himself.

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What caught Tansley's imagination

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was an obscure part of
Freud's theory

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that said the human brain
was actually an electrical machine.

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That the sense data that came in
through the eyes and ears

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created bursts of energy that flowed
around networks inside the brain,

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just like electrical circuits.

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Tansley was fascinated by this,
and he made an extraordinary
conceptual leap.

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He decided that he could take
this model of the mind

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and apply it
to the whole of the natural world.

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He became convinced that
underneath the complexity of nature
were systems,

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vast interconnected circuits
that linked all animals and plants,

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through which energy flowed.

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He invented a name for them.

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He called them ecosystems.

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Tansley's idea of the mind
was that of a network.

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So you have energy going through
tubes into a new explosion,

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a new explosion.
What would create this explosion

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would be sense perception.

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So these energy tubes would go out
in the modern mechanism
of the mind,

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creating a network,
a system within the mind.

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Now this he would transfer,
one-to-one, almost,

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into his description
of the natural environment,

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in which energy between species
and among the species

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would constitute a system,
an ecosystem,

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of energy flowing between
these different species.

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So the grasshopper eating the grass
will then be energy transforming
through the tube

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into the dune where the beetle
would do his or her job.

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A very mechanical idea.

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It's very mechanical indeed.

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But Tansley went much further.

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He said that if these
ecosystems were disturbed,

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they would always try and return to
an original balanced state.

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Which meant that they had
the ability to regulate
and stabilise themselves.

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It was part of what Tansley called
The Great Universal Law
of Equilibrium.

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All these systems, he wrote,
are constantly tending towards
positions of balance or equilibrium.

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The idea that there was an
underlying balance of nature

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went back thousands of years
in Western culture.

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But it had always been a dream,
a vision of a hidden natural order.

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What Tansley was saying was that
this might be scientifically true.

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That from the English countryside
to the jungles of Africa,

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there was an underlying mechanism
that regulated nature
as if it were a machine.

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But it was only a hypothesis.

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No-one knew
how the ecosystem worked.

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The answer would not come from
the study of nature

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but from a new kind of machine -
the computer.

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LILTING BAROQUE-STYLE PIANO PLAYS

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Jay Forrester studied electrical
engineering at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology,

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where he became one of the
early innovators in computers.

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And in the 1950s, he built
America's early warning system.

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It was a global network
of radar installations,

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all linked to giant computers
in the United States.

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Its aim was to create
a stable balance in the nuclear
stand-off of the Cold War.

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Forrester was convinced that
the whole world, not just nature,

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was composed of systems.

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He believed that by building
his own man-made system,
the early warning network,

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he had identified how
all systems stabilised themselves.

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It was through a mechanism
called feedback.

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What Forrester meant by this
was that every action we take

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has consequences
that feed through the system

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and then return to shape our future
behaviour in ways we cannot see.

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But the computers could.

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They had the power to analyse the
true consequences of human actions -

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what Forrester called
feedback loops.

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Most people

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think of action as,

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"Here's a problem,
I'll take action, and I'll solve it."

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Straight line.

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But that's not the system
in which we live.

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There is a problem, we take action,
it may change things,

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it gives us a new environment
for taking the next action
and changing things.

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And so we live in these networks

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of feedback loops,

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that are controlling us and
those things that we interact with.

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So we're just part of a system?

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We're just part of a system.

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That is anathema to many people

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because they like to think of us
as people, as independent,

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but basically they are driven
in most of their actions
by feedback loops,

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which means physical systems,
electrical systems, social systems,

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political systems, biological
systems, internal medicine,
medical systems of the body.

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They are all fundamentally
networks of feedback loops.

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Forrester was one of the leaders of
an ambitious new scientific movement
called cybernetics.

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Cybernetics said that everything,

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from human brains to cities
and even entire societies,

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could be seen as systems
regulated and governed by feedback.

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It fascinated both biologists
and physicists

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because it seemed to offer
a new insight into how order
is maintained in the world.

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It also had powerful implications
for human beings.

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Because cybernetics
saw human beings not as individuals

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in charge of their own destiny,
but as components in systems.

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At its heart, cybernetics was
a computer's-eye view of the world,

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and from that perspective,
there was no difference between
human beings and machines.

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They were just nodes in networks,

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acting and reacting
to flows of information.

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One of the leading cybernetic
theorists called Norbert Wiener

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laid this out clearly in a book that
became the bible of the movement.

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He called it
Control And Communication
In The Animal And The Machine.

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If, as Norbert Wiener
and his team decided,

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you can actually
link the behaviour of machines

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and the behaviour of fleshy humans
through mathematical formulae,

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and if you can model and predict
those formulae using computers,

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then you end up in a world where
humans and machines seem to be one.

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They can glimpse the
deep cybernetic truth,

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one in which natural,
mechanical and social systems
are seen as one another.

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Humans linked together
in a man-machines system.

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We are all now part of
a universal system
linked together by information.

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And cybernetics transformed
the idea of the ecosystem

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because it seemed to explain how
ecosystems stabilised themselves.

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They did it through feedback.

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It would lead ecology to rise up

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and become one of the dominant
sciences of the 20th century.

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The key figures
were two American ecologists.

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They were brothers called
Howard and Eugene Odum.

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Howard Odum took cybernetics

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and used it as a tool to analyse
the underlying structure of nature.

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In the 1950s he travelled the world,
collecting data from ponds
in North Carolina,

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to a tropical rainforest
in Guatemala,

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and a coral reef in the Pacific.

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In each case, he reduced
the bewildering complexity of nature
to cybernetic networks.

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The ecosystems were drawn out as
electrical circuits

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with feedback loops that showed
how energy flowed round the system

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between all the animals
and the plants.

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Odum even built
real electrical circuits
to represent the environments

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and he used them to adjust the
feedback levels in the system.

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Odum really believed that you could
actually make a model of that system

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and monitor and watch
how all the parts were working.

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You could decide
when you had to intervene,

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when it was...when the feedbacks
weren't sufficient,

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so that they come back
to some equilibrium,
some stable functioning.

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When I visited him in the middle '80s

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and we started talking about
his own history,

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he went beside his desk
and he pulled out

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one of these electrical
circuit boards from the middle '50s.

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Howard Odum's brother Eugene
then took these ideas,

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and he used them to define
a powerful vision of nature

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that still dominates
our imaginations today.

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He wrote a book called
The Fundamentals Of Ecology that
became the Bible of the science.

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It portrayed the whole planet as
a network of interlinked ecosystems.

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And Tansley's machine hypothesis
became a scientific certainty.

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But to make their theory work,

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what the Odum brothers had done
was distort the scientific method.

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They had taken a metaphor, that
the ecosystem worked like a machine.

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But then, instead of looking
at the data they had gathered
from the natural world

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and trying to find out
if this was true,

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the Odum brothers did the opposite.

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They simplified the data
to an extraordinary degree.

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They took the complexity and the
variability of the natural world

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and they pared it down
so it would fit with the equations
and the circuits they had drawn.

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As they did this,
it stopped being a metaphor

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and became what seemed to be
a scientific description of reality.

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One of Howard Odum's assistants
later wrote

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that what they were really doing
was creating a machine-like fantasy
of stability.

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Driven by the desire for prestige,
he said,

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biological reality disappeared.

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Organisms were expected to act
mechanically, in predicable ways.

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Animals became robots,

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and the ideas were never presented
as hypotheses to be tested.

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When I first went into ecology,
we really did believe that nature

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had to have a fixed stability,
it had to be stable.

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That's what we were taught,

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the miraculous thing about nature was
it was stable
against all these problems.

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So we believed
there was a balance of nature.

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The balance of nature idea
comes from two things.

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Ancient Western mythology
and religious beliefs,

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and also from the machine age.

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The actual mathematics that came out
of it was mathematics of machinery.

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Nature should have that
same kind of mechanical steady state,

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which would fit in with
this balance of nature idea,

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that if you left nature alone,
it would run like
a perfectly-oiled piston engine.

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This fusion of cybernetics and
ecology was going to lead to far
more than just a new idea of nature,

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for out of it was about to come
a new organising principle
for human society as well.

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It would be a vision
of a new kind of world,

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one without the authoritarian
exercise of power,
and the old political hierarchies.

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A vision that was different
from past ideologies,

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because it mirrored
how order was created in nature.

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The man behind it
was a utopian visionary

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who had worked as an engineer
in the US military.

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He was called Buckminster Fuller.

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"I will make my life an experiment,"
he said,

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"to search for the principles
that govern the universe."

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Fuller had invented
a radically new kind of structure

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that was based on the underlying
system of order in nature.

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It was called a geodesic dome.

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It was very simple
but incredibly strong.

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Giant geodesic domes were built
to house the radar installations

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for America's early warning system
in the Arctic.

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These are what we call
geodesic radons.

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They are designed to protect very
powerful and important apparatus

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from the great storms of nature.

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We think of structures
as being something very powerful,

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but these are very delicate.

237
00:16:24,320 --> 00:16:27,480
Yet they've been through about
10 years

238
00:16:27,480 --> 00:16:31,320
of the most formidable conditions
in the Arctic

239
00:16:31,320 --> 00:16:34,520
that any structures
have ever had to stand.

240
00:16:36,080 --> 00:16:40,040
But I'm not a...a dome salesman,

241
00:16:40,040 --> 00:16:43,880
I'm an explorer in structures.

242
00:16:43,880 --> 00:16:50,320
I'm interested in the
fundamental principles by which
nature holds her shapes together.

243
00:16:50,320 --> 00:16:54,440
Fuller's geodesic domes
imitated the idea of the ecosystem.

244
00:16:54,440 --> 00:16:56,760
Each tiny strut was weak,

245
00:16:56,760 --> 00:17:00,600
but when thousands were joined
to form a giant interconnecting web,

246
00:17:00,600 --> 00:17:02,320
they became strong and stable.

247
00:17:03,440 --> 00:17:07,680
Fuller believed that this principle
of copying nature could be applied

248
00:17:07,680 --> 00:17:12,400
not just to structures,
but to creating new systems
to manage societies.

249
00:17:14,720 --> 00:17:19,920
But in order to do this,
Fuller realised that there would
have to be a conceptual shift

250
00:17:19,920 --> 00:17:23,640
in the way human beings
saw their position in the world.

251
00:17:23,640 --> 00:17:29,360
Instead of seeing themselves
as members of nations or classes
or hierarchies of power,

252
00:17:29,360 --> 00:17:35,400
people should instead see themselves
as equal members of a global system.

253
00:17:37,920 --> 00:17:41,600
To persuade them, Fuller
used the image of the spacecraft

254
00:17:41,600 --> 00:17:45,720
that NASA had built
to take Americans to the moon.

255
00:17:45,720 --> 00:17:47,800
NASA had employed ecologists

256
00:17:47,800 --> 00:17:52,520
to help design a closed system
for the astronauts inside the cabin.

257
00:17:53,880 --> 00:17:58,280
It was constantly monitored
by computers to keep it
in perfect balance.

258
00:17:59,800 --> 00:18:02,880
And in 1964, Fuller wrote a
manifesto

259
00:18:02,880 --> 00:18:07,080
called The Operating Manual
For Spaceship Earth.

260
00:18:07,080 --> 00:18:11,600
It said that the world should be
seen as one giant spaceship

261
00:18:11,600 --> 00:18:15,800
and that all human beings should
try and manage that global system

262
00:18:15,800 --> 00:18:19,360
so it was kept in a perfect balance,

263
00:18:19,360 --> 00:18:23,000
just like the tiny cabin
of the spacecraft.

264
00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:24,840
He would say in his lectures, like,

265
00:18:24,840 --> 00:18:29,120
"You guys wonder what it's like to be
an astronaut. Well, I can tell you.

266
00:18:29,120 --> 00:18:30,720
"You are an astronaut.

267
00:18:30,720 --> 00:18:34,240
"We're all astronauts
on board Spaceship Earth."

268
00:18:34,240 --> 00:18:38,560
So here's the image of the Earth
suddenly being like a spaceship,

269
00:18:38,560 --> 00:18:44,200
like a closed ecosystem,
in which we live in strict balance.

270
00:18:44,200 --> 00:18:47,800
Notice that suddenly
you are not in the centre any more.

271
00:18:47,800 --> 00:18:50,000
The spaceship is in the centre.

272
00:18:52,840 --> 00:18:59,160
Meaning that you start de-emphasising
the importance of
the individual human being

273
00:18:59,160 --> 00:19:02,680
because you're concerned about
the welfare of the system,

274
00:19:02,680 --> 00:19:04,680
not the individual.

275
00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:09,480
There was a threat, though,
to this new vision, Fuller said.

276
00:19:09,480 --> 00:19:11,360
It was politicians,

277
00:19:11,360 --> 00:19:16,720
because politicians believed that
they could control the system.

278
00:19:16,720 --> 00:19:19,440
And that always led to
struggles for power,

279
00:19:19,440 --> 00:19:21,960
and out of that came wars.

280
00:19:21,960 --> 00:19:25,880
Instead, the system
should be allowed to find
its own natural order

281
00:19:25,880 --> 00:19:30,360
and there would be no need for
hierarchies and power any longer.

282
00:19:31,960 --> 00:19:35,080
If man is going to stay on board
our Spaceship Earth,

283
00:19:35,080 --> 00:19:39,080
it can't be done by politics
because politics is so inadequate.

284
00:19:39,080 --> 00:19:43,360
It cannot be commanded by politics
because a politician
doesn't know about such a thing.

285
00:19:43,360 --> 00:19:47,640
He has to go on what have you, which
is the kind of design he now has.

286
00:19:47,640 --> 00:19:49,360
All he can do is give you war.

287
00:19:51,120 --> 00:19:54,120
And Fuller's ideas caught the
imagination of a generation

288
00:19:54,120 --> 00:19:57,840
who had become disillusioned
with politics.

289
00:19:59,680 --> 00:20:02,760
The counterculture had emerged
after the student movement

290
00:20:02,760 --> 00:20:07,920
had failed to change
the structure of power in America.

291
00:20:07,920 --> 00:20:11,120
Between 1967 and 1971,

292
00:20:11,120 --> 00:20:14,560
over half a million Americans
left the cities

293
00:20:14,560 --> 00:20:17,920
and set out to create thousands
of experimental communities.

294
00:20:20,400 --> 00:20:24,000
It was one of the biggest migrations
in American history.

295
00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:29,280
They used Buckminster Fuller's
geodesic domes
to build their new homes,

296
00:20:29,280 --> 00:20:35,560
but more than that,
they adopted his cybernetic ideas
as their organising principle.

297
00:20:35,560 --> 00:20:40,640
The communes deliberately had no
hierarchy of control or authority.

298
00:20:40,640 --> 00:20:45,640
Instead, the central idea was that
everyone should see themselves
as part of a system,

299
00:20:45,640 --> 00:20:48,960
a distributed network
that could stabilise itself

300
00:20:48,960 --> 00:20:52,040
just like the ecosystems in nature.

301
00:20:53,280 --> 00:20:56,560
In one of the most influential
communes called Synergia,

302
00:20:56,560 --> 00:21:00,920
this cybernetic theory
was called ecotechnics.

303
00:21:00,920 --> 00:21:07,720
We were trying to create a society
based on understanding ecosystems.

304
00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:11,800
A society of inter-relationship
and balance.

305
00:21:13,560 --> 00:21:19,040
A man-machine biological system
working in combination.

306
00:21:19,040 --> 00:21:22,840
That was sort of our ideal
with what we called ecotechnics.

307
00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:32,120
The idea of the ecotechnics is simply
that you are a part of the system,

308
00:21:33,960 --> 00:21:41,760
in which there would be
less if not no hierarchy at all.

309
00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:46,120
In the communes, anything that
smacked of politics was forbidden.

310
00:21:46,120 --> 00:21:50,320
No coalitions or alliances with
others in the group were permitted.

311
00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:54,960
Instead, individuals dealt with each
other one-to-one in group sessions

312
00:21:54,960 --> 00:21:58,640
in which they told each other how
they were feeling about each other.

313
00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:02,280
I don't know if I want you
to reach me.

314
00:22:04,960 --> 00:22:06,960
Because I'm afraid.

315
00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:09,440
I'd like you to try to reach me.

316
00:22:09,440 --> 00:22:11,760
I don't know that
I'd like you to reach me.

317
00:22:13,840 --> 00:22:17,280
They remained free individuals,
yet at the same time

318
00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:22,040
through this system of feedback,
the group would be stable.

319
00:22:22,040 --> 00:22:25,200
We didn't use the word system,

320
00:22:25,200 --> 00:22:30,080
but we very much thought of
the whole group, of ourselves,

321
00:22:30,080 --> 00:22:31,640
as all connected.

322
00:22:31,640 --> 00:22:35,160
There was a group sense,
there was a group feeling.

323
00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:38,280
That was our whole purpose,
was to be...

324
00:22:38,280 --> 00:22:43,080
fully connected to each other
and to have this group sense

325
00:22:43,080 --> 00:22:46,960
of the organism of many who act as
one. That's part of what it meant.

326
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:49,960
Switch.

327
00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:51,600
Switch.

328
00:22:51,600 --> 00:22:54,760
Switch, switch, switch, switch.

329
00:22:54,760 --> 00:22:58,720
'It would be like a dance where we're
creating a new kind of society,

330
00:22:58,720 --> 00:23:03,000
'freeing each person
to be fully themselves in the group,

331
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:06,200
'but we are all affecting each other
at all times,

332
00:23:06,200 --> 00:23:08,720
'like an organism of many
who act as one.'

333
00:23:14,040 --> 00:23:17,360
And there was another group
of visionaries in California

334
00:23:17,360 --> 00:23:19,760
who believed the communes
were only a prototype

335
00:23:19,760 --> 00:23:24,360
for a self-organising society
built on a global scale.

336
00:23:24,360 --> 00:23:31,000
They were the engineers who
were inventing the new computer
technologies on the west coast.

337
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:34,040
The way they were going to develop
these technologies

338
00:23:34,040 --> 00:23:39,440
would be shaped by this vision
of a natural order
that combined humans and machines.

339
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:42,760
At the end of 1968,

340
00:23:42,760 --> 00:23:46,080
a group of computer pioneers
took a conscious decision.

341
00:23:46,080 --> 00:23:49,800
They would give up
developing large mainframes.

342
00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:56,200
Instead, they would create
a way of linking small
personal computers in networks.

343
00:23:57,960 --> 00:23:59,720
..when I get introduced.

344
00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:04,600
The fact that I'm going to come to
you mostly through this medium here

345
00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:06,520
for the rest of the show...

346
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:09,840
In a dramatic demonstration,
they showed how this could be done.

347
00:24:09,840 --> 00:24:13,760
It included all the necessary
elements, even the computer mouse.

348
00:24:13,760 --> 00:24:15,400
..the devices that I'm using.

349
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:20,400
I use three,
and they're not all centred.

350
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:22,880
You have a pointing device called
a mouse,

351
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:26,840
a standard keyboard,
and special key set we have here.

352
00:24:26,840 --> 00:24:30,360
Now, computer,
do the automatic switching
that will bring in a camera.

353
00:24:30,360 --> 00:24:33,240
Hi, Bill. That's great.

354
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:36,720
Now we're connected. Audio. You can
see my work, you can point at it.

355
00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:38,720
I can see your face and we can talk.

356
00:24:38,720 --> 00:24:41,520
These pioneers believed that
in the future,

357
00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:46,280
computer networks would allow you
to create the very kind of society

358
00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:50,640
that was being developed in
the communes but on a global scale.

359
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:53,840
Everyone could be free
as individuals, no longer dominated

360
00:24:53,840 --> 00:24:57,640
by old hierarchies,
or controlled politically.

361
00:24:57,640 --> 00:25:01,000
Instead, they would be linked
together in a global system

362
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:03,280
that would find
its own natural order.

363
00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:06,400
It would do it through the feedback
of information

364
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:10,000
between millions of people
on their personal computers.

365
00:25:12,360 --> 00:25:15,880
The demonstration was filmed by
one of the prophets of this vision.

366
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:20,680
He was a leader of the commune
movement called Stewart Brand.

367
00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:23,000
They felt like computers
had liberated them

368
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:25,000
and they were going to use
computers.

369
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:28,000
They were going to enable computers
to liberate society,

370
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:30,080
civilisation, every-damn-body.

371
00:25:30,080 --> 00:25:34,440
I can have file control and I've
already accepted file referencing.

372
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:38,640
'Their computers would
save the world. These guys
would make sure they could.

373
00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:43,080
'It was going to be a power to
the people in a very direct sense.'

374
00:25:43,080 --> 00:25:48,440
That was an early iteration
of the internet,
and of Google and all of that.

375
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:51,640
This was a vast network,

376
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:53,520
that was self-correcting.

377
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:58,880
By the late 1960s, what had happened
was that our modern idea of nature,

378
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:05,320
the ecosystem, and cybernetic
theories about computers,
had fused together.

379
00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:09,600
Out of it had come an epic new
vision of how to manage the world

380
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:12,280
without the old corruption of power.

381
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:15,200
It was a vision that seemed to be
different

382
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:18,000
from all past political attempts
to change the world

383
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:21,320
because it was based on
the natural order.

384
00:26:21,320 --> 00:26:27,360
In 1967, a young writer called
Richard Brautigan crystallised this.

385
00:26:27,360 --> 00:26:32,520
One morning he walked through
the streets of San Francisco
handing out a manifesto.

386
00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:36,400
It described a future world
held in a balanced equilibrium

387
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:39,480
by the fusion
of nature and computers.

388
00:26:39,480 --> 00:26:44,800
It was called All Watched Over
By Machines of Loving Grace.

389
00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:47,360
'I like to think -

390
00:26:47,360 --> 00:26:50,240
'and the sooner the better -
of a cybernetic meadow

391
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:53,600
'where mammals
and computers live together

392
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:59,160
'in mutually programming harmony
like pure water touching clear sky.

393
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:02,120
'I like to think -
right now, please -

394
00:27:02,120 --> 00:27:05,800
'of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics,

395
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:12,080
'where deer stroll peacefully
past computers as if they were
flowers with spinning blossoms.

396
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:15,400
'I like to think - it has to be -

397
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:19,200
'of a cybernetic ecology where we are
free of our labours

398
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:24,200
'and join back to nature, returned to
our mammal brothers and sisters

399
00:27:24,200 --> 00:27:29,320
'and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.'

400
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:45,000
And then the world was hit by
a new kind of crisis.

401
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:47,600
It was a crisis
that could not be solved

402
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:51,640
by the old hierarchies of power
or by national governments.

403
00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:55,920
As a result, the idea of the
world as a self-regulating system

404
00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:58,360
was going to move to centre stage.

405
00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:03,640
By the early 1970s,

406
00:28:03,640 --> 00:28:07,920
it was clear that there was
a global environmental crisis.

407
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:12,720
But it was also clear that
politicians had no idea
how to deal with it.

408
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:17,200
The crisis baffled them because
of its horrifying complexity.

409
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,920
It crossed national boundaries
and involved the whole of nature.

410
00:28:22,440 --> 00:28:28,200
But then a man emerged who said
he knew how to save the world
from this disaster.

411
00:28:28,200 --> 00:28:35,640
He was the cybernetic scientist
who had built America's early
warning system, Jay Forrester.

412
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:38,720
By now, Forrester had become
a powerful figure

413
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:42,480
because he used his computers
to build models of corporations

414
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:45,800
and even whole cities as systems.

415
00:28:47,320 --> 00:28:51,720
Then Forrester became involved
with a think tank
called the Club of Rome.

416
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:55,080
They were a group of international
businessmen and technocrats

417
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:58,640
who were trying to find a way of
solving the environmental crisis.

418
00:29:01,040 --> 00:29:05,040
At a meeting in Switzerland,
Forrester told them
that the only way to do this

419
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:09,520
was to look at the world
as an entire cybernetic system.

420
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:13,640
And he would build a model that
would do just that in his computer.

421
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:18,720
Our problem is the big problem.

422
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:22,800
Our problem is a hard one and you're
not dealing with the hard problem.

423
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:25,080
And that hard problem was?
The world.

424
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:28,320
So on the way back from Switzerland,

425
00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:32,080
I sketched out

426
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:35,240
the first sketch of such a system,

427
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:38,200
which was this.

428
00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:41,600
This is a picture
of that first sketch

429
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:47,520
of the world in terms of
population, resources,

430
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:50,640
capital investment in industry,

431
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:56,240
investment in agriculture, and the
accumulated pollution in the world.

432
00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:59,760
All of these lines
here are the feedback loops,

433
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:01,720
the many feedback loops.

434
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:05,880
Those feedback loops are spread
all through the model,

435
00:30:05,880 --> 00:30:10,240
as you can see, by the various lines
that are connecting things here.

436
00:30:10,240 --> 00:30:16,080
Back in America, Forrester set up
a team of systems theorists.

437
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:19,200
They built a computer model
of the world.

438
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:21,960
The team designed it
as a giant cybernetic system

439
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:25,840
in which all known data
about population growth,

440
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:29,280
industrial production,
food and agriculture,

441
00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:32,840
natural resources and pollution
were all fed in.

442
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:39,120
The team then ran the model
and what it predicted
was an imminent global collapse.

443
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:42,560
And when you ran that model,
what did it show?

444
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:45,200
It showed that in all likelihood,

445
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:49,320
population would overshoot
the carrying capacity of the world,

446
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:53,920
and then you would have a collapse
of population back to a lower level,

447
00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:58,600
and that the standard of living
would decline through all that period
in a serious way.

448
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:04,760
The model based on current policies
lead essentially to disaster.

449
00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:09,280
Disease, crowding, wars,
atomic bombs.

450
00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:11,160
It was pessimistic, wasn't it?

451
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:14,720
Well, I considered myself
an optimist.

452
00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:18,520
The Club of Rome then held a press
conference where they announced that

453
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:24,040
the computer had predicted that
the world was heading for disaster.

454
00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:26,960
From a very large number
of computer runs

455
00:31:26,960 --> 00:31:29,520
making various assumptions,

456
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:32,840
adopting various maxima and minima,

457
00:31:32,840 --> 00:31:38,600
there is in fact a general forecast
of a breakdown of world society

458
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:41,080
in the first decades
of the next century.

459
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:43,760
We regard the MIT report

460
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:48,040
as an extraordinarily important
initial pioneering effort.

461
00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:50,560
It's opening up
a great new field of research,

462
00:31:50,560 --> 00:31:52,480
research in the world as a system.

463
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:57,680
The Club of Rome published a book
called The Limits To Growth,

464
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:02,560
which laid out
Forrester's world model
and its frightening conclusions.

465
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:07,760
It was a bestseller,
and it transformed the debate
about the environment.

466
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:12,800
Because Forrester's model offered
a way of conceptualising the problem

467
00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:17,280
that seemed to be scientific
and therefore neutral.

468
00:32:17,280 --> 00:32:20,560
His vision of the world
as one interconnected system

469
00:32:20,560 --> 00:32:25,360
seemed to transcend politics
and the petty interests of nations.

470
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:30,640
Then in Stockholm in 1972,

471
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:34,840
the United Nations held a conference
for the first time ever

472
00:32:34,840 --> 00:32:37,400
on the world environmental crisis.

473
00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:40,200
The international bureaucrats
who ran it

474
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:43,000
turned to this idea of the world
as a system

475
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:45,480
to provide the conceptual framework.

476
00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:53,840
The world needed to be managed
in a new non-political way

477
00:32:53,840 --> 00:32:56,600
to avoid the threat
of global collapse.

478
00:33:00,560 --> 00:33:04,680
This is the beginning of a debate.
Nobody's decided what the limits are.

479
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:09,040
One can question whether it's 2010
when we all collapse or 2050

480
00:33:09,040 --> 00:33:12,000
when we all collapse, but what is
absolutely certain is,

481
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:14,280
you cannot run a planetary society

482
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:20,640
on the total irresponsible
sovereignty of 120 different
governments. It simply can't be done.

483
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:25,800
Forrester's apocalyptic predictions
dominated the conference.

484
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:30,680
But he also said that his
computer model showed the only way
of avoiding that disaster.

485
00:33:33,080 --> 00:33:38,320
World governments, he said,
should give up on any idea
of promoting continual growth.

486
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:43,960
Instead they should create a new
kind of steady state for the world.

487
00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:48,960
Their job was now to hold the world
system in a balanced equilibrium

488
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:50,840
to avoid the collapse.

489
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:56,520
Forrester was arguing for
a fundamental shift in the role
of politics and politicians.

490
00:33:56,520 --> 00:33:59,560
They should give up
trying to change the world,

491
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:03,160
and instead,
the aim of politics should now be

492
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:07,680
to manage the existing system -
to hold it in equilibrium.

493
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:13,160
The idea of growth

494
00:34:13,160 --> 00:34:16,520
is in contrast to the idea
of equilibrium,

495
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:21,520
where you're maintaining
a constant or equilibrium level

496
00:34:21,520 --> 00:34:27,520
of population and enough industrial
activity to sustain that population,

497
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:33,560
which could lead to a much more
desirable steady state equilibrium,

498
00:34:33,560 --> 00:34:36,120
a man-made equilibrium of our choice,

499
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:41,160
and live within
the boundaries set by the world,

500
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:44,000
by the Earth,
by the capacity of the Earth.

501
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:47,040
Which was a stable world?

502
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:49,480
Which would be a stable, ongoing one.

503
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:55,400
But large sections
of the environmental movement
were opposed to this idea

504
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:58,560
and they held protests
outside the conference.

505
00:34:58,560 --> 00:35:04,600
They said that the idea of
enforcing stability on the world
was not neutral,

506
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:09,560
that the Limits To Growth model
was not being used to save the world
but to control it.

507
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:13,360
Critics of Forrester's model
pointed out

508
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:18,880
that he had put in no feedback loops
for politics and political change.

509
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:23,200
The idea that in the future human
beings might adapt to the problems

510
00:35:23,200 --> 00:35:25,840
by changing their values and goals,

511
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:29,440
and thus changing the whole system,
was absent.

512
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:32,920
Human beings were only present
in the model as mechanistic nodes.

513
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:36,600
It was a machine vision of the world

514
00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:41,520
which could not imagine a future
where human beings, unlike machines,

515
00:35:41,520 --> 00:35:45,800
would behave in ways
they hadn't before.

516
00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:48,520
That led to only two choices.

517
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:52,360
You either preserve the existing
system in a steady state

518
00:35:52,360 --> 00:35:54,960
or face catastrophe.

519
00:35:54,960 --> 00:36:00,000
And this, the protestors argued,
suited those who wanted to maintain
the status quo -

520
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:01,520
those in power.

521
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:12,360
This argument had happened before,
back in the 1930s,

522
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:15,840
at the very moment when
Britain's imperial power was waning.

523
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:22,120
In 1935, Arthur Tansley, who
invented the idea of the ecosystem,

524
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:28,560
accused one of the most powerful men
in the British Empire
of abusing ecological ideas.

525
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:34,960
He was Field Marshal Smuts,
who was the autocratic ruler
of South Africa.

526
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:40,960
Smuts used ecological ideas
to develop a philosophy
he called holism.

527
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:45,840
Holism said that the whole world
was one giant organic system

528
00:36:45,840 --> 00:36:49,640
in which everything
had its natural place.

529
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:52,280
So long as everyone stayed
in their proper place,

530
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:54,600
this global system would be stable.

531
00:36:56,240 --> 00:36:59,960
Smuts had a vision
of a new global world order

532
00:36:59,960 --> 00:37:04,440
where artificial distinctions
like nations would disappear,

533
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:08,320
and his model for this world system
was the British Empire.

534
00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:13,280
And it would be managed by the white
European races

535
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:16,400
because that was their natural place
in the whole.

536
00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:20,560
General Smuts
actually coined the word holism.

537
00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:24,640
Every human being
would have its place within society,

538
00:37:24,640 --> 00:37:28,800
every animal would have its place
in the environment,

539
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:30,760
and every other species -

540
00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:33,440
grass, grasshoppers, you name it -

541
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:36,760
would have their place
in the environment,

542
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:40,920
struggling towards fulfilling their
wholeness in the greater whole.

543
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:47,160
'It is an order of nature
and an order of society
which celebrates equilibrium.

544
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:49,880
'It's a static world,

545
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:55,040
'and holism became a tool to make
the British Empire more stable.'

546
00:37:56,840 --> 00:38:02,320
The idea that ecosystem theories,
theories of equilibrium etc,

547
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:09,960
that these are neutral, is bogus.
They are highly politically charged.

548
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:17,880
What Smuts was doing showed
how easily scientific ideas
about nature and natural equilibrium

549
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:21,640
could be used by those in power
to maintain the status quo.

550
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:30,320
Tansley hated this, and he publicly
accused Smuts of what he called

551
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:33,600
"the abuse
of vegetational concepts."

552
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:43,920
Now 40 years later, the protestors
in Stockholm were accusing Forrester
of doing the same.

553
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:47,440
The real role of the
environmental movement, they said,

554
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:51,760
was not to hold the world stable
but to struggle to change it.

555
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:57,320
Because it was the greed of
the Western elites that was causing
the environmental crisis.

556
00:38:57,320 --> 00:38:59,960
The movement, they claimed,
was being hijacked

557
00:38:59,960 --> 00:39:03,200
by right-wing think tanks
and Cold War technocrats

558
00:39:03,200 --> 00:39:06,880
who were using the balance of nature
as a political trick.

559
00:39:06,880 --> 00:39:10,600
The trick is claiming that
you have something as nature.

560
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:14,800
"In nature you have this balance

561
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:19,160
"and we need a society
to have the same balance."

562
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:21,160
And then...

563
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:25,680
it becomes unquestionable,
because you cannot change nature.

564
00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:30,320
And thus you cannot change society,
because society should be
the same as nature.

565
00:39:30,320 --> 00:39:33,080
So it's a sort of
intellectual trick.

566
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:37,040
They needed this concept of the
balanced nature

567
00:39:37,040 --> 00:39:40,960
to protect the elite
and to protect the system.

568
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:45,040
But the protests were in vain,

569
00:39:45,040 --> 00:39:50,080
because Forrester's
cybernetic vision of the world
as one interconnected system

570
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:53,120
now began to penetrate
deep into the public imagination.

571
00:39:54,400 --> 00:40:01,320
What began to rise up in the 1970s
was the idea that we,
and everything else on the planet,

572
00:40:01,320 --> 00:40:04,560
are connected together
in complex webs and networks.

573
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:10,120
Out of that were now going to come
epic visions of connectivity,

574
00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:16,640
like the Gaia theory, and utopian
ideas about the worldwide web
and the global economic system.

575
00:40:18,720 --> 00:40:21,440
Underlying this was
a profound shift.

576
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:26,560
What was beginning to disappear
was the enlightenment idea,
that human beings

577
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:30,760
are separate from the rest of nature
and masters of their own destiny.

578
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:37,560
Instead, we began see ourselves
as components, cogs in a system,

579
00:40:37,560 --> 00:40:42,520
and our duty was to help that system
maintain its natural balance.

580
00:40:46,080 --> 00:40:49,480
It's quite clear the entire Earth has
to be treated as a spaceship,

581
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:51,720
run as a spaceship,
planned as a spaceship.

582
00:40:51,720 --> 00:40:57,960
We're all part of the web of life
and the sooner man fully
appreciates this, the better.

583
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:03,960
This image, our home, our Earth,
one people in one world.

584
00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:09,080
What we've really got to do is manage
the entire planet as a single system.

585
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:11,680
Well, ecology
is the balance of nature.

586
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:15,600
It's the relationship between me,
the plants and animals,
and the world in general.

587
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:20,440
Now the problem is totally global,
which is going to mean running the
entire planet as a single system.

588
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:23,280
Without upsetting the natural
balances that are there.

589
00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:26,480
Ecology, yes.
That's what I'm talking about.

590
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:27,640
TAPE SLOWS DOWN

591
00:41:28,040 --> 00:41:31,680
What made this systems idea
so powerful

592
00:41:31,680 --> 00:41:35,240
was that it didn't seem
to be based on a political ideology.

593
00:41:35,240 --> 00:41:40,720
It was a scientific idea
of organisation that
mirrored the natural world.

594
00:41:40,720 --> 00:41:49,120
But at precisely this moment
in the mid-1970s, the science that
supported the idea fell apart.

595
00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:55,320
The fatal flaw
in the theory of the self-regulating
ecosystem was exposed.

596
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:59,760
A new generation of ecologists
began to produce empirical evidence

597
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:04,080
that showed that ecosystems
did not tend towards stability,

598
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:06,640
that the very opposite was true,

599
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:13,400
that nature, far from seeking
equilibrium, was always in a state
of dynamic and unpredictable change.

600
00:42:13,400 --> 00:42:18,760
Ecologists really thought that
we were dealing with a stable world.

601
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:20,440
You didn't question it.

602
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:26,160
It was just like the air. You didn't?
You didn't question it at all.

603
00:42:26,160 --> 00:42:33,640
Now the really remarkable thing is
when people began to find out that

604
00:42:33,640 --> 00:42:39,880
that might have some chinks in it,
that that might not be right,

605
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:43,120
people were really almost
viscerally upset.

606
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:47,520
Ecologists, many ecologists,
were almost viscerally upset

607
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:54,520
because it offended that very
comfortable idea that nature
was stable.

608
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:56,120
HOWLING

609
00:42:56,120 --> 00:43:01,800
Ecologists began to revisit
environments that were supposed
to be models of stability.

610
00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:08,600
One ecologist called Daniel Botkin
travelled to a remote island in
the Great Lakes called Ile Royale.

611
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:13,360
In theory, the populations of
moose and wolves were supposed
to live in a stable balance.

612
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:17,760
But when Botkin researched the
history of the two populations,

613
00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:21,880
he discovered that in reality
they were constantly changing.

614
00:43:21,880 --> 00:43:24,720
In theory, the wolves
controlled the moose,

615
00:43:24,720 --> 00:43:28,600
and the moose and the wolves
and vegetation all lived together

616
00:43:28,600 --> 00:43:30,960
in this miraculous system.

617
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:37,200
We went out
to try to figure out how could this
beautiful system be steady?

618
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:42,120
Once I got out there
and started to look at
the historic information about it,

619
00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:46,800
it was all about changes -
everything was always changing, it
wasn't what it was supposed to be.

620
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:51,480
When you looked at the populations
of the moose and wolves,
you saw nothing but change.

621
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:53,680
They just fluctuated.

622
00:43:55,960 --> 00:43:59,360
You can still say, "Maybe they're
on their way to a steady state,"

623
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:02,760
but then you can go back and look
at the history of the vegetation.

624
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:11,440
Trees will tell us their own story
and the soil with its pollen
tells you more of the story,

625
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:15,400
so you can reconstruct centuries
of history from forests.

626
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:18,800
When you looked at that,
you saw nothing but change.

627
00:44:18,800 --> 00:44:24,640
As a result of this, ecology started
to look at the history of ecosystems

628
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:29,760
and what they discovered
began to undermine the very
foundations of the science.

629
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:35,480
The theory said that when
ecosystems were disturbed
by storms or fires or floods,

630
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:39,680
they would always try to return
to their original balanced state.

631
00:44:39,680 --> 00:44:44,000
But study after study showed that
the very opposite was true,

632
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:50,320
that after the disturbances, the
plants and animals would recombine
in radically different ways.

633
00:44:50,320 --> 00:44:56,080
The history of nature
was full of radical dislocations
and unpredictable change.

634
00:44:57,600 --> 00:45:00,480
There was no stable pattern.

635
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:02,440
Big wind storms,

636
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:04,400
hurricanes,

637
00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:05,560
tornadoes,

638
00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:07,080
fires.

639
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:12,080
You get a disturbance, the forest
doesn't come back the way it was.

640
00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:14,120
Disturbance comes along

641
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:18,240
and it resets the system
to something new.

642
00:45:18,240 --> 00:45:24,560
What we were doing was to challenge
the basic assumptions of ecology,

643
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:29,720
that the balance of nature
was something that
guided ecological systems.

644
00:45:29,720 --> 00:45:35,640
But even as this was happening,
a huge experiment began that aimed
to prove convincingly

645
00:45:35,640 --> 00:45:38,760
how stability
was maintained in ecosystems.

646
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:44,760
An ecologist called George Van Dyne
set out to create a computer model

647
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:48,360
of the grasslands that
stretched across Colorado.

648
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:53,320
All the animals, insects, plants
and the systems that linked them

649
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:56,640
were going to be recreated
inside a computer.

650
00:45:56,640 --> 00:46:01,800
Van Dyne wanted to finally show
how feedback worked in nature.

651
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:05,960
What George Van Dyne really wanted
to do was take this universe

652
00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:09,640
that you see in front of you,
this grassland landscape,

653
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:15,120
and be able to
represent it in the computer,
to have a virtual grassland.

654
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:23,040
It's an act of substantial arrogance
to say that I think that I can devise
a virtual ecosystem

655
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:28,760
and capture it inside this computer,
I think. That's a good...
It was a great idea.

656
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:33,280
Van Dyne hired dozens of researchers
to begin collecting data

657
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:39,160
on everything that lived
in the grasslands
AND what was underneath in the soil.

658
00:46:39,160 --> 00:46:43,360
They built a machine that travelled
across hundreds of square miles,

659
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:45,360
hoovering up insects
and small mammals.

660
00:46:46,160 --> 00:46:49,680
These were then opened up
to find out what they had eaten.

661
00:46:51,200 --> 00:46:56,480
Other researchers followed larger
animals to find out in minute detail
what they were eating.

662
00:46:58,000 --> 00:47:01,720
We had a graduate student who would
follow the pronghorn, the antelope.

663
00:47:01,720 --> 00:47:04,920
He could walk along beside him
and watch what they ate.

664
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:09,160
Every time they took a bite
of his plant, he would record
on his tape recorder,

665
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:12,960
"One bite of blue grama,
one bite of sphaeralcea."

666
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:16,600
Two bites of artemisia,
three inches tall without flower.

667
00:47:16,600 --> 00:47:20,000
Two more bites of artemisia.
Six bites of kosha without flower.

668
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:25,080
Three bites of blue grama,
two inches tall without flower.

669
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:28,560
Sometimes they would take a bite.
He couldn't tell what it was,

670
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:32,000
so he would stop, open the animal's
mouth, reach in, pull it out,

671
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:33,840
look at it, put it back and go on.

672
00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:39,720
And they put a hole
in the side of the bison

673
00:47:39,720 --> 00:47:45,680
where you could reach in and sample
what the bison had been eating,
look at it under a microscope.

674
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:51,640
Then you'd weigh each
little separate pile
and you'd enter it in a data sheet.

675
00:47:51,640 --> 00:47:55,160
We'd give it to Dave
who was the data manager

676
00:47:55,160 --> 00:47:59,920
and he would get one
of his minions to punch it on
an IBM card, an 80 column IBM card,

677
00:47:59,920 --> 00:48:03,960
and that would be read
into the computer
and stored on magnetic tape.

678
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:08,000
Let's take a look at the reading
cycle and see how we're doing.

679
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:14,680
George Van Dyne then used
all the data to construct a vast,
intricate model

680
00:48:14,680 --> 00:48:19,720
that simulated how all the different
elements of the system -
the plants and animals - interacted.

681
00:48:19,720 --> 00:48:24,040
Every species had its own sub-model
that then was linked through
feedback loops

682
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:27,320
to other species
and their sub-models.

683
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:32,280
This grasshopper sub-model tells us
what's going on with grasshoppers.
There's predators down here.

684
00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:35,640
At this point,
it's just an unspecified thing.

685
00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:38,960
What that means is that there
was another sub-model

686
00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:43,200
for birds, for small mammals
and other potential predators
of grasshoppers.

687
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:48,360
So there was another
sub-model that was simulating
the populations of, let's say,

688
00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:53,320
lark buntings all the time,
which is one of the predators
on the grasshoppers.

689
00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:59,360
That sub-model then feeds
that information to this sub-model,

690
00:48:59,360 --> 00:49:05,920
which uses Sam's equation
to predict the death rate of
grasshopper eggs for that day.

691
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:10,960
But when George Van Dyne ran
the model, what happened
seemed to make no sense.

692
00:49:10,960 --> 00:49:13,960
No stable underlying
pattern emerged.

693
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:19,600
Van Dyne was convinced that all
the model needed was more data

694
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:26,200
and he worked feverishly, sometimes
all night, putting more and more
information into the computer model.

695
00:49:27,720 --> 00:49:31,480
But in fact, he was just
making the problem worse.

696
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:39,040
The ecosystem theory had worked for
previous ecologists because they
had ruthlessly simplified nature.

697
00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:43,960
What Van Dyne was really doing
with his mountains of data

698
00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:50,000
was recreating the real
chaotic instability of nature
inside his computer.

699
00:49:54,440 --> 00:50:01,640
In 1981, Van Dyne died
of a heart attack at the age of 48
and the project was closed down.

700
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:07,640
The collapse of his experiment
marked the end of the systems theory

701
00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:11,640
which had driven the science
of ecology for 50 years,

702
00:50:11,640 --> 00:50:17,640
the theory that somewhere in nature
is an ultimate order,
a balanced equilibrium.

703
00:50:19,600 --> 00:50:26,240
The balance of nature is an illusion
and we hold on to it

704
00:50:26,240 --> 00:50:28,280
so tightly in our culture.

705
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:34,680
That is completely counter to
what contemporary ecology tells us.

706
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:40,000
Contemporary ecology says that we
live in a very dynamic world.

707
00:50:40,000 --> 00:50:44,120
We have to replace that assumption
of the balance of nature.

708
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:47,240
You have to discard the myth.

709
00:50:48,400 --> 00:50:51,320
The scientific basis
had fallen away,

710
00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:55,840
but the idealistic vision of
the self-organising system
continued to grow.

711
00:50:55,840 --> 00:51:01,840
The reason
was that in an age of mass democracy
where the individual was sacrosanct

712
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:09,520
and politics discredited and
distrusted, it offered the promise
of a new egalitarian world order.

713
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:17,080
SHOUTING AND YELLING

714
00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:23,680
So this is the situation here,
incredible scenes.

715
00:51:23,680 --> 00:51:26,800
Parliament in the hands of
these opposition supporters.

716
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:31,400
The MPs fled so quickly that they
even left their papers behind.

717
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:38,360
In the early part of this century,
the idea of the self-organising
network re-emerged

718
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:41,920
in what seemed to be
its original radical form.

719
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:47,920
Beginning in 2003,
a wave of spontaneous revolution
swept through Asia and Europe.

720
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:52,480
In each case, hundreds of thousands
of people flooded into the capitals

721
00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:56,960
of Georgia, the Ukraine
and Kyrgyzstan

722
00:51:56,960 --> 00:51:59,640
and they forced the old
corrupt leaders from power.

723
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:04,160
In all these cases,
no-one seemed to be in charge.

724
00:52:05,680 --> 00:52:11,120
But then, journalists discovered
that the internet
had played a key role.

725
00:52:11,120 --> 00:52:17,120
It had brought millions of people
together to create revolutions
that had no guiding ideology

726
00:52:17,120 --> 00:52:22,160
except a desire for
self-determination and for freedom.

727
00:52:22,160 --> 00:52:26,560
Tonight, well, I feel really sort
of powerful and happy.

728
00:52:26,560 --> 00:52:30,480
We did what we wanted.
This is our freedom.

729
00:52:34,320 --> 00:52:38,360
Now, computer,
do the automatic switching
that will bring in a camera.

730
00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:39,840
Hi, Bill.

731
00:52:39,840 --> 00:52:41,720
That's great. Now we're connected.

732
00:52:41,720 --> 00:52:44,800
It seemed to be the triumph
of the vision that had begun

733
00:52:44,800 --> 00:52:48,480
with the computer utopians
in California in the 1960s.

734
00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:53,760
They had dreamt of a time when
interconnected webs of computers

735
00:52:53,760 --> 00:52:58,520
would allow individuals to create
new non-hierarchical societies,

736
00:52:58,520 --> 00:53:02,600
just like in the commune
experiments, but on a global scale.

737
00:53:02,600 --> 00:53:06,480
Now that dream seemed
to be really coming true.

738
00:53:06,480 --> 00:53:13,480
In 2009, Twitter and Facebook
appeared to play a key role
in organising the protests in Iran.

739
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:19,040
There was a lot of excitement
in the ability of individuals in Iran

740
00:53:19,040 --> 00:53:22,720
to connect with a global audience
and with their peers inside Iran

741
00:53:22,720 --> 00:53:29,520
to build a political consciousness
in support of democracy.

742
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:34,880
It represents the emergence of a
completely new information ecosystem.

743
00:53:36,400 --> 00:53:42,280
But in all the revolutions,
that new sense of freedom
lasted only for a moment.

744
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:47,480
In the Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych,
the man who was ousted,
is back in power

745
00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:51,320
and has started to dismantle
democratic institutions.

746
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:57,160
In Kyrgyzstan,
the new president fled
because of accusations of corruption

747
00:53:57,160 --> 00:54:01,160
and the country is torn apart
by ethnic clashes.

748
00:54:01,160 --> 00:54:06,040
And Georgia has now fallen in
the world index of press freedom.

749
00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:09,000
At the time of the revolution,
it was 73rd.

750
00:54:09,000 --> 00:54:11,120
It is now 99th.

751
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:17,680
What had been forgotten in
the optimism about the revolutions

752
00:54:17,680 --> 00:54:22,680
was what had really happened
in the original experiments
in the communes.

753
00:54:26,160 --> 00:54:28,080
They all failed.

754
00:54:28,080 --> 00:54:33,800
Most lasted no more
than three years,
some for less than six months.

755
00:54:33,800 --> 00:54:41,040
And what tore them all apart
was the very thing that was supposed
to have been banished - power.

756
00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:45,200
The commune members
discovered that some people
were more free than others.

757
00:54:46,840 --> 00:54:50,560
Strong personalities came to
dominate the weaker members of
the group,

758
00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:53,680
but the rules
of the self-organising system

759
00:54:53,680 --> 00:54:57,600
refused to allow any organised
opposition to this oppression.

760
00:55:00,840 --> 00:55:04,880
The original idea was
very positive indeed.

761
00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:09,360
It was to create
an egalitarian society

762
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:14,720
in which everyone would both be free
to be themselves

763
00:55:14,720 --> 00:55:21,240
and also be able to contribute to the
group in a really positive way.

764
00:55:21,240 --> 00:55:27,520
But the very rules that kind of set
up this egalitarian group

765
00:55:27,520 --> 00:55:32,120
resulted in the opposite
of the dream.

766
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:37,160
They resulted in creating
a hierarchical structure

767
00:55:37,160 --> 00:55:41,240
in which some could be
dominant over others

768
00:55:41,240 --> 00:55:49,960
because everyone is not equally
powerful in their voice against one
other person.

769
00:55:54,400 --> 00:55:57,840
In the communes, what were supposed
to be systems of negotiations

770
00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:01,960
between equal individuals
often turned into vicious bullying.

771
00:56:04,200 --> 00:56:11,280
In practice, these would be
20 and 30 minute hazing sessions

772
00:56:11,280 --> 00:56:16,120
that were, um...quite awful
to experience

773
00:56:16,120 --> 00:56:23,400
and usually were met by silence
with the rest of one's peers,

774
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:28,200
so there wasn't any, "Hey, lay off.
He's an OK guy,"
or anything like that.

775
00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:31,160
There were no supportive comments.

776
00:56:31,160 --> 00:56:36,840
The rule was "travel in your
own country", which means
"shut up, listen and observe".

777
00:56:36,840 --> 00:56:39,040
There was fear, actually,

778
00:56:39,040 --> 00:56:45,880
because the people who were more
dominating and had more power
could make you ...

779
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:50,040
There was anger.

780
00:56:50,040 --> 00:56:54,000
There was constantly a background
of fear in the house.

781
00:56:54,000 --> 00:57:01,480
It was like a virus running
in the background, so that...
like Spyware.

782
00:57:01,480 --> 00:57:04,680
You know it's there, but you
don't know how to get rid of it.

783
00:57:06,480 --> 00:57:09,960
The failure of the commune movement
and the fate of the revolutions

784
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:13,920
show the limitations of
the self-organising model.

785
00:57:13,920 --> 00:57:19,920
It cannot deal with the central
dynamic forces of human society -
politics and power.

786
00:57:21,520 --> 00:57:26,600
The hippies took up the idea of
a network society because they
were disillusioned with politics.

787
00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:31,920
They believed that this alternative
way of ordering the world was good

788
00:57:31,920 --> 00:57:35,920
because it was based
on the underlying order of nature.

789
00:57:35,920 --> 00:57:38,320
But this was a fantasy.

790
00:57:38,320 --> 00:57:45,360
In reality, what they adopted
was an idea taken from the cold
and logical world of the machines.

791
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:51,080
Now, in our age, we are all
disillusioned with politics

792
00:57:51,080 --> 00:57:56,920
and this machine organising
principle has risen up to become
the ideology of our age.

793
00:57:58,440 --> 00:58:03,160
But what we are discovering
is that if we see ourselves as
components in a system,

794
00:58:03,160 --> 00:58:07,320
that it is very difficult
to change the world.

795
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:11,160
It is a very good way of
organising things, even rebellions,

796
00:58:11,160 --> 00:58:16,200
but it offers no ideas
about what comes next.

797
00:58:16,200 --> 00:58:22,560
And just like in the communes,
it leaves us helpless in the face of
those already in power in the world.

798
00:58:25,120 --> 00:58:30,880
Next week's programme will show how
we have reconciled ourselves to
this voluntary sacrifice of power

799
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:35,600
by coming to believe
that WE are nothing more
than machines ourselves.

800
00:59:13,480 --> 00:59:15,240
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd