What Dawkins says is that we are just machines - our function is just machines whose role is to allow embedded systems to carry on over time. And what these systems are doing is playing mathematical games of strategy against each other, hoping to survive. So we become soft, fleshy machines to carry these codes. I think that’s another example of a system that diminishes us. We’ve embraced it quite happily, because it offers us a retreat from trying to change the world. Whatever we do, liberals, the right, corporations, in recent history it seems to lead to unforseen consequences. We throw up our hands and go, “Oh dear!”.
Essentially the system we have evolved is based around wealthy farmers feeding the poor crap, cheap food, and poor farmers feeding the wealthy high-quality, expensive food.
Real-food campaigner Michael Pollan: how the food industry works.
A technology that gave citizens the ability to retrieve public space and public discourse from corporate control has turned into something beyond the worst imaginings of Klein’s anti-globalisation movement: a vehicle of corporate hypergiants possessed of unmatched efficiency in selling back to citizen-consumers their own expression and desire.
Becky Hogge
