''Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World'' is a 2016 American

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

directed by

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; né Stipetić; born 5 September 1942) is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author. Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, his films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unusu ...

. In it, Herzog ponders the existential impact of such things as the Internet, robotics,

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

, and the

Internet of things Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...

on modern human life. The leaders in the field of technology who are interviewed in the film include

Leonard Kleinrock Leonard Kleinrock (born June 13, 1934) is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. Kleinrock made several ...

Bob Kahn Robert Elliot Kahn (born December 23, 1938) is an American electrical engineer who, along with Vint Cerf, first proposed the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), the fundamental communication protocols at the hea ...

Ted Nelson Theodor Holm Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American pioneer of information technology, philosopher, and sociologist. He coined the terms ''hypertext'' and ''hypermedia'' in 1963 and published them in 1965. According to his 1997 ''Forbes'' p ...

Sebastian Thrun Sebastian Thrun (born May 14, 1967) is a German-American entrepreneur, educator, and computer scientist. He is chief executive officer of Kitty Hawk Corporation, and chairman and co-founder of Udacity. Before that, he was a Google vice preside ...

, and

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman. He is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been considered the wealthiest person in th ...

. The film, which was sponsored by the company NetScout, premiered at the

2016 Sundance Film Festival The 2016 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 21 to January 31, 2016. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 2, 2015. The opening night film was ''Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You'', directed by Heidi E ...

Synopsis

Beginning his journey at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

, where pioneering work on the development of the Internet took place, Herzog visits the first piece of Internet equipment ever to be installed. The film then explores some of the positive and negative impacts the Internet has had on society. In a chapter titled "The Dark Side", Herzog interviews the Catsouras family, who have been harassed online since pictures depicting their daughter's corpse were leaked onto the internet. As no wireless transmissions are allowed within a 10-mile radius around the

Green Bank Telescope The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in Green Bank, West Virginia, US is the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope, surpassing the Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope in Germany. The Green Bank site was part of the National Rad ...

in West Virginia, Herzog travels there to interview the local residents. He finds a group of people afflicted by an electromagnetism sensitivity condition who claim to have found relief from their symptoms after settling near the telescope.

and his quest to send humans to Mars are investigated. Artificial intelligence is touched upon, and the film considers whether robots might become replacements for human interaction in the future. At the end of the film, Herzog asks multiple interviewees: "Can the Internet dream of itself?"

Themes

When asked by

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. I ...

what effect he hoped the film would have on the audience, Herzog replied:

Reception

''Lo and Behold'' received generally favorable reviews from critics. On

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, 92% of 144 critics' reviews of the film are positive, with an average rating of 7.5/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "''Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World'' finds Werner Herzog bringing his distinctive documentarian gifts to bear on a timely topic with typically thought-provoking results." On

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the film has a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

score of 76 out of 100 based on reviews from 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World 2016 films American documentary films Anthropology documentary films Films directed by Werner Herzog 2016 documentary films ARPANET History of the Internet Documentary films about the Internet Films about artificial intelligence Fiction about government by algorithm Works about hyperreality 2010s English-language films 2010s American films English-language documentary films