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

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

directed by

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with un ...

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

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

, the

Internet of Things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...

, and more on human life. The film 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 Ew ...

, and was sponsored by the company

NetScout NetScout Systems, Inc. (stylized as NETSCOUT) is a provider of application performance management and network performance management products located in Westford, Massachusetts. In July 2015, NetScout acquired the communications business of Dan ...

. The film contains interviews with

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 ...

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...

Sebastian Thrun Sebastian Thrun (born May 14, 1967) is a German-American entrepreneur, educator, and computer scientist. He is CEO of Kitty Hawk Corporation, and chairman and co-founder of Udacity. Before that, he was a Google VP and Fellow, a Professor of Comp ...

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. Nelson coined the terms ''transcl ...

, and other leaders of the technology world.

Synopsis

Herzog narrates over footage of the University of California at Los Angeles, where pioneering work building the Internet took place, and looks at the first piece of Internet equipment ever to be installed. The film then explores the positive and negative impacts the Internet has had on society. Herzog interviews a family that has been harassed online after the death of their daughter. An institute where no electronic equipment is allowed within a 3-mile radius is examined, and people living in this area describe their experience. The film comes to a group of people that are afflicted with an electromagnetism sensitivity condition who have to live in this area. Elon Musk and his quest to send humans to Mars are investigated. Artificial intelligence is touched upon and the film comes to focus on how robots could become replacements for human interaction in the future. At the end of the film, Herzog poses the question to multiple interviewees, "Can the Internet dream of itself?"

Themes

When asked by TechCrunch.com what effect could the film have on the audience, Herzog replied:

Reception

''Lo and Behold'' has received generally favorable reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 93% approval rating based on 141 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5 out of 10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 76 out of 100 based on 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 Government by algorithm in fiction 2010s English-language films 2010s American films