Review: ‘Lo and Behold’, the Danger, and Potential, of the Digital Revolution

NY Times ^ | 18 Aug 2016 | A.O. Scott

[oblomov]

“Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World” is Werner Herzog’s documentary about the internet. For some readers, that sentence will be sufficient. One of our most intellectually ambitious filmmakers — a self­professed seeker of ecstatic truths, a tireless foot soldier of cinema — tackles what he calls “one of the greatest revolutions” humanity has experienced. The combination of Mr. Herzog’s doggedly curious sensibility and the mysteries of the digital universe seems both improbable and irresistible.

In the course of a singularly peripatetic career, that curiosity has most often taken Mr. Herzog, who will turn 74 on Labor Day, into frontier zones where civilization gives way to wildness. He has ventured into Antarctica, Alaska, the jungles of the Amazon and the forests of his native Germany in search of oddity and revelation. The web might seem like a fairly tame environment for such an adventurous temperament, but it is also the repository of — or at least the inspiration for — mind­blowingly grandiose ideas.

The devices in our hands and on our desks, and the invisible, ubiquitous networks that link them, are often seen to be ushering us toward utopia or hastening the arrival of the apocalypse. Mr. Herzog, an unseen interviewer with an unmistakable voice, seems receptive to both views. He listens to scientists and entrepreneurs celebrate the expansion of knowledge and learning that the digital revolution has brought forth, and to others who lament the erosion of privacy and critical ­thinking skills. The physicist Lucianne Walkowicz explains how a solar flare could bring the whole network — and with it our super­technologized way of life — crashing down in a matter of days.

[oblomov]

I saw it today, and thought it was quite good.

I've long been a fan of Herzog's work. I like how he documents unusual people uncritically and with intense curiosity.

[proust]

I love Herzog and will see anything he does. Wasn’t crazy about his death penalty doc though.

[DoughtyOne]

Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

click and support them

[Moltke]

bmfl