Irascible maverick Werner Herzog turns his wilfully bemused gaze to the internet and discovers a connected world of mixed blessings - from the insidious threat of hacking, hopeless net addiction and the disturbing future worlds run on artificial intelligence. Coming at the subject from his customary blind side, the deadpan Herzog unlocks responses from web-heads, security spooks and the net-cursed that other directors can only dream of.
The world changed forever on 29 October 1969 and director Werner Herzog examines the ramifications of that first internet message in this wide-ranging, but frustratingly superficial survey. Despite the fact a cybersecurity company has sponsored his ten-chapter documentary, Herzog is quite prepared to warn of the dangers of over-dependence upon the worldwide web. Indeed, he is dismayed by the way in which some sites plastered graphic images of the death of Nikki Catsouras in a car crash in October 2006, and is puzzled by the ethical issues relating to driverless vehicle accidents, system hacking, lovesick robots and outposts on Mars. But there is also a nostalgic element, as Herzog recalls the hopes of pioneers like Ted Nelson and Leonard Kleinrock who believed in a new means of communication and interconnectivity back in the 1960s. Thus, while Herzog is right to express concerns about the possibility of civilisation being taken over by machines, he is most worried about humanity's capacity for collective folly and the abnegation of responsibility for its very future.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | Werner Herzog |
