I just watched this genius(*) movie for the first time after having borrowed it from the library. You may be able to watch it for free here.

(*) I like to believe I don’t use that word lightly.

The movie has no dialog and no plot but a powerful message which is achieved by using different time and dimensional scales (something I got used to in my professional career which might be why this works so well on me) to put humanity in context to the planetary timescale, mostly the atmospheric timescale which runs about a thousand times slower than human life does. From this perspective human life begins to resemble that of a of an insect colony, human motion becomes the blood vessels of a super organism which is technology society that spreads like a cancer (or a mold) on the surface of the planet. Humans are organized very similar to how components are organized on a microchip. This leads us/me to consider whether these are natural patterns, specifically whether anyone is in charge of whether technology just works the same on different scales (it probable does). Then if this is indeed true who do we really serve when we go on about productivity and quotas; is me pumping out blog posts really that much different from a NAND-gate doing its thing in a computer? Who serves who?

Note that Koyaanisqatsi has two sequels.



I got mentioned in this post over at Canadian Dream: Free at 45 today.

Originally posted 2010-03-22 21:38:39.