"The World is a Corporation" (Network, 1976)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN posts it as an enduring, still-relevant artistic depiction of corporate power when discussing finance, tech lobbying and ethics.
What it is
A six-minute clip of the famous speech from the 1976 film Network in which the world is described as a corporation. It portrays a world run by corporate interests.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2021 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Cites lsiq · 2021-10 · on “G7 finance officials endorse principles for central bank digital currencies”
I will take the risk and give an explanation. The are two first principles that few fully understand: The first is that we are creatures of commerce - that is how we sustain ourselves. The economy is the total FLOW of all concurrent commercial transactions, and this is conducted via cash & money. For an artistic, but accurate image of the world we live in see this scene from Network (1976): [this video] . The second first principle is that you are a sovereign spirit in this universe, and so is everybody else. There are no behavioral rules in the natural reality, only in the social reality. The rules, symbols, ideologies, religions, and institutions exist to manipulate other people's behavior and
Cites deck4rd · 2022-11 · on “China Got Our Kids Hooked on ‘Digital Fentanyl’”
[this video] is as relevant as ever > Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporati
Cites Terr_ · 2023-11 · on “Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse”
Somehow that makes me think of the memorable (and ambiguously villainous) speech from The Network (1976) [0]. [0] [this video]
Cites Terr_ · 2024-10 · on “Silicon Valley, the new lobbying monster”
> "All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace" This reminds me of the tycoon's thunderously semi-religious speech from The Network [0], which has aged pretty well for a movie 50 years old. > The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. [0] [this video]