HyperNormalisation

cracks     terms     individuals   despise    pierce through
tentacles      mutated      focus    dimensions      monitor      pull back

No one talks about power these days. We are encouraged to see ourselves as free, independent 1________ not controlled by anybody, and we 2_________ politicians as corrupt and empty of all ideas. But power is all around us. It's just that it has shifted and _______ into a massive system of management and control, whose 3________ reach into all parts of our lives. But we can't see it because we still think of power in the old 4________ – of politicians telling us what to do.

The aim of the film I have made, HyperNormalisation, is to bring that new power into 5_______, and show its true 6_________. It ranges from a giant computer high up in the mountains of northeast America that manages and controls over seven percent of the worlds total wealth, to the complex algorithms that constantly 7________ every move and choice you make online, to modern scientific ideas about what the normal human being should be – in the their weight and in their feelings and moods.

If you 8________ and look at the everyday life all around you, you can see the 9_______ appearing through the shiny surface of the cocoon we are living in. So much of the modern world is beginning to feel odd, unreal and sometimes fake. I think these are the dynamic forces outside beginning to 10_________ as the system begins to fail.

- Adam Curtis



Vocab:

think tank     detached attitude     algorithim      performance targets       outcome measures

pantomime     ever-growing     components      absorbs

1. The institute is a ________ for business and society that focuses on the sustainable design of information technology. 

• 2. The programmers who set up the virtual currency designed an ________ that issues new coins.

3. Through all the arguments among other committee members, she kept a _________.

4. The walls are made of a material that _____ sound.

5. The _________  of simple sentence are a subject and a verb, which may also have an object and modifiers.

6. This chapter provides an overview of considerations for the development of ________ for observational comparative effectiveness research

7. There are also likely to be heavier penalties if _______ are missed. 

8. It was able to expand and meet an _________ demand. 

Watch:

Excerpts from HyperNormalisation

True or false?

Tall buildings are essentially worthless.

The Brexit showed us that we live in a dream world.

The original vision of social media was to create an echo chamber.

The reality opens us up to more perspectives.

Your real job is shopping.

The original idea of cool was more political.

Cool is an idea from the 1960s.

Politicians are cool.

Their real job is to make us click more.

Ours is the first all-encompassing system.

Hypernormalisation means pretending everything is normal when it isn't.
 

Discuss

1. Do you think the world has become more dangerous and volatile over 2016? Why?
2. Were you shocked by Brexit and the election of Trump?
3. Do you agree with the filmmaker that we live in an all-encompassing system? What evidence is there for this?
4. What do you think of "politicised" people? Is it no longer "cool" to be politicised?
5. Do you agree that a lot of what we call work is fake?
6. Our online activities are being tracked, stored and analysed by companies and by government agencies. By the time you are 50, the internet will know you better than you know yourself. Is this something we should fear? Are their upsides to this too?
7. Overall, what did you think of these excerpts from the film? Would you watch the whole thing?