It was released in November 2000 as the lead single from their fourth studio album Spiritual Machines.

Raine Maida stated that the lyrics "focus upon how people tend to treat each other as machines in our day-to-day life.

In both the original release of the song and its second release as part of OLP's A Decade compilation album in 2006, the song is immediately preceded by a track entitled "R.K. 2029", which is a narration from Kurzweil's book read aloud by Kurzweil himself.

In her review of Spiritual Machines, Allmusic's MacKenzie Wilson commented that "Maida's lazy nasal-like vocals carry the song with sheer essence" and said that, "There are no thunderous riffs plaguing the song's initial plea for a little soul-searching.

[2]" The music video was created by Oli Goldsmith and is an animated collage of the more than 200 artworks he painted for the Spiritual Machines project.