The Outer Limits - Original O.B.I.T.

Vaguely reminiscent  of E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops of 1909, but with an alien-NSA angle, here's "Original O.B.I.T.", a 50-year old episode of The Outer Limits. Conrad Hall was the DP.



"...A crucial turning point comes when one is able to acknowledge that modern technics, much more than politics as conventionally understood, now legislates the conditions of human existence. New technologies are institutionalized structures within an existing constitution that gives shape to a new polity, the technopolis in which we do increasingly live. 

For the most part, this constitution still evolves with little public scrutiny or debate. Shielded by the conviction that technology is neutral and tool-like, a whole new order is built — piecemeal, step by step, with the parts and pieces linked together in novel ways, without the slightest public awareness or opportunity to dispute the character of the changes underway. It is somnambulism (rather than determinism) that characterizes technological politics — on the left, right, and center equally."

from Autonomous Technology by Langdon Winner

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Update: Check out also "The Special One," from the original Outer Limits series. That story reminds The Secret Sun of a famous story from the childhood of Jack Sarfatti (a physicist whose wild ideas now seem mainstream).