“If one were to propose a Bill of Rights for the year 2000 it would defend human liberty, not civil liberty. Guaranteed rights would include health, truth, reality, sexual fulfillment, study, travel, peace, intimacy, leisure, the right to be unique. Man is not “civilized” until he is whole. He is not whole until he’s assured these rights. But I would add another: the right of every man to be protected from the consequences of his own ignorance. The computer provides this protection.

“The computer does not make man obsolete. It makes him fail-safe. The computer does not replace man. It liberates him from specialization. The transition from a culture that considers leisure a “problem” to a culture that demands leisure as a prerequisite of civilized behavior is a metamorphosis of the first magnitude. And it
has begun. The computer is the arbiter of radical evolution: it changes the meaning of life. It makes us children. We must learn how to live all over again.

“‘Recently, as in his natural symbiotic relations with plants and animals, man’s relation to cybernetic systems has been subtly changing toward a more closely-woven interdependency resembling his other ecological ties. This trend often is depicted as ‘intelligent’ machines dominating man; but the possibility is more clearly that of organic partnership…'”

Gene Youngblood, “The Technosphere: Man/Machine Symbiosis”, Expanded Cinema, New York: P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1970. p 180.

Footage: Jordan Benson, Allures, 1961.