Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016)

Truly Dreadful Film

Too much of everything

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Provocative. Terrifying. Quirkily informative. Engrossing. As always, Herzog poses questions that draw revealing responses from his interviewees—collectively a fascinating bunch of hackers sace and its distribution via networks; how it got started, where it is today, where it's going. He delves into the darkest aspects of the Internet looking at lives disconnected from nature and ruined by web addiction. Herzog also explores the immense benign and even, perhaps, spiritual possibilities of a connected globe while schooling us on the digital underpinnings we take for granted. The way the internet balances its data-flow load, for example is instructive. We learn, counter-intuitively, the larger such networks grow, the more efficient they become. Or consider that one good-sized solar flare—an event scientists deem a certainty every few hundred years—could fatally disrupt modern civilization. This is at once an inspiring and scary film. But there are moments of lightness too. A radio telescope specialist plays banjo in a bluegrass band. We learn the "Lo" of the title derives from the first word ever sent via modem —"Log." But it crashed the receiving computer after the first two letters. The ingenuity of humankind juxtaposed with humans' tendency to foul our nest has not been looked at with an eye as steely as that of Werner Herzog's. Like all the best docs, the ideas that enrich Lo and Behold will likely boil up in your consciousness many times in the days that follow your viewing.

My relation with German director Werner Herzog and his films is dating back about four decades. Sometime in the 70s I attended a 'festival of West German film' which I do not know how escaped the censorship filters in my native Romania. That week I saw several of the films of filmmakers in the generation representing the 'New German Film "which became one of the most interesting trends of the 70s in international cinema. Of all movies the strongest impression made to me 'Aguirre, the Wrath of Gods' - a historical drama set in the period of the 'Conquista' - the Spanish colonization of South America - starring Klaus Kinski, an extraordinary actor. The name the movie director was Werner Herzog was.The career of the film-maker which once was called by Francois Truffaut "the most important film director alive" has had many ups and downs. Part of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's generation, together with Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff and Wim Wenders his interests and artistic endeavors diversified after the 80s. Documentaries seems to be the area that gave the most rewards and enjoyed appreciation lately. His most recent film in this category 'Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World' is the history, present and future of the Internet. A subject that of course intrigued me allowing a unique encounter between my passion for cinema and one of the most interesting filmmakers of the movie industry, and my profession (and life passion) - the Internet.The ten episodes of the film treat in somewhat chronological order the beginnings of the Internet, its achievements and problems, and its future with opportunities and risks. The first short episode aroused interest and created nostalgia of those who lived the era of the beginnings of communications between computers, or - like me - had the opportunity to personally meet some of the heroes of those times. Leonard Kleinrock is one of those who attended the first attempt to establish communication between computers located in the Californian universities in Los Angeles and Stanford. The electrical cabinet (actually a computer with a tiny computing power compared to any mobile phone today, but a peak of technology in the late 60s) that initiated the communication in the episode described in the film was trying to send word 'log' (to login) to the remote machine. However, the first message ever sent over the Internet encountered first 'bug' on the Internet, and caused the first 'crash', so that the third letter of the word, a 'g' never appeared on the other side. It's just that 'lo' from the beginning of the movie title that offers the chance of a play of words in English using the expression 'lo and behold' which means surprise event that we might call in today's hi-tech language as 'disrupting '.Each of the other nine segments addresses from different perspectives the relationship between information technology and communications in the world we live today or or the world of the future. There are for example segments about artificial intelligence and its applications in intelligent transports, the Web's beginnings and development prospects of hypertext communications, about Internet safety and the unbearable easy security attacks, about the connection between electronic games and smart development programs. Several other topics were abandoned during production, for example those related to electronic payments and currency Bitcoin, although someday footage may appear and be made public. Known personalities including Bob Kahn, Elon Musk and Tim Berners-Lee appear in the film. Some episodes are more pessimistic and discuss the dangers and threats introduced by the Internet - impressive being the one about the family photos decrying the child died in an accident traffic incident are made public with a typical lack of discretion and sensitivity in communications unfortunately so prevalent on the Internet. Not all episodes are directly related to the Internet - for example the phenomenon of sensitivity to electromagnetic waves is known, studied and treated in different ways (the one shown in the movie is just one option) but it is not directly linked to the global network but rather to radio communications . We meet on this occasion with one of those folks belonging to an anarchist community that tries to live in social islands unconnected to the global network. The interviewing techniques used by Werner Herzog mostly include asking from off (we never see his face face) questions with German calm and precision (underlined by his accent), but he obviously guided interlocutors and created the glue and thread of reasoning developed in the film.Werner Herzog's interest in the Internet and technology is recent. Until a few years ago, Herzog could be considered a 'techno-skeptic' and its attitude toward certain Internet applications such as social media was clearly negative. Things have changed by the time he approached the project but the humanistic view of his questions are trenchant and come from unexpected directions, with a dose of caution and even pessimism about the interaction between human nature and technology These remain the traits that distinguish this film which is addressing in a different way than we are accustomed the Internet and mass communications.Addressing the theme of 'Dreams' and showing the combination of Internet and artificial intelligence as one of the directions the most promising technology, but also of the most intriguing and perhaps even dangerous of the possible routes in the future, Herzog places himself in the vanguard technology.Will the Internet become (together with entities equipped with artificial intelligence) completely autonomous? And after this happens - the problem only when - what will be the difference between the perfect thinking machines and the imperfect individuals that make up mankind? The ability to dream? Love? Can robots dream or fall in love? What about the Internet?

The internet is only a small subject for those that (like me) see it in the simple terms of what I know I do on it – check emails, read information, etc. However with such an expansive subject it was a good thing that the curious mind of Herzog was given the project of examining it in this film. I have read some people complain about the weakness of this film as a 'documentary', with comments about how key players such as Mark Zuckerberg and others are not included; the answer to such criticism is in the title, because this is not a documentary so much as it is a reverie, which is to say a musing and free-floating daydream through the subject.In the editing suite this was obviously reined in somewhat because the film is structured into broad chapters. This helps the film be watchable, but importantly does not lose the sense of drifting through the subject with plenty to think about but nothing too solid that would break the state of reverie. Whether or not this works for you will depend on the individual, but Herzog's style made it work for me because he drives this approach with his angles and his line of thought (although he often seems less present than in some other of his films). It doesn't all fit together neatly of course, and at times tonally it is uneven, but mostly it is a quite fascinating wander through the ideas and connections of the internet, and is well worth seeing for what it leaves you with as much as what it offers directly.

There are very important, tough questions that need to be asked about where technology is leading us. "Does the internet dream of itself?" is not one of them. This effort from Herzog is a major disappointment but not a surprise, partly because it started out as a corporate promotional video. Also because most of his docs are ostensibly on subjects that aren't that interesting or important on the surface, but he makes them riveting. Here, he's tackling a subject about which everything that can be said, has already been said, except for the hard questions. Is the internet even a net positive thing? Why bother going to Mars? It's getting harder and harder "to make a contribution" (to science, or to society), so what does that mean for us? Soon enough robots will beat Messi at football -- will anyone want to watch that? These questions don't get asked. And these are easy ones that came up anyway. Herzog, who is a known non-tech guy, just seems ignorant and uninterested in technology, both the good and the bad of it. And we need him to pry forcefully into the moral morass that it's dragging us into. But he can't. He's just a baby boomer who is completely immersed in his real- world occupation that doesn't involve surfing the internet. He doesn't know, doesn't care. So unfortunately, he has gathered the most maddeningly thick-headed "scientific experts" to make bland, vapid observations about how amazing it all is. This is a huge disappointment. Werner is just not the man for this job -- so he's moved on to something more up his alley; volcanoes...