For What it's Worth

In 10 micro chapters, Werner Herzog, the director of the classic odysseys Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Aquirre, the Wrath of God(1972), tackles the internet, its rise, and the perils and promise of a connected world. The scope and the questions are nothing new — “Who is going to be liable if a computer makes a mistake?” Herzog asks about self-driving cars — but the filmmaker’s laid-back yet probing style and quest for getting at the human condition is nothing short of infectious, viral, if you will.

The segments, with pointed titles like “The Internet of Me,” “The Glory of the ‘Net,” and, of course, “The Future,” each delve into a different facet of the internet, be it historical or conjecture. Herzog buffers most of the blips with the Dickian question, “Does the internet dream of itself?” The segments that provoke the most are the segments that tackle the downside of being connected. One woman tags the Net as a “manifestation of the Anti-Christ.” The underscoring of that is a family who lost their daughter in a car accident, and the pain that the graphically snapped photos from the scene inflicted on them during their grieving as they were unleashed out onto the web, ever proliferating, unretrievable and unstoppable.

That tale of tragedy becomes the sad underbelly to hypertext inventor Ted Nelson’s optimistic allusion to water as a metaphor for flow of connectivity. Other notable talking heads in the documentary include convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick, and Pay Pal and Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk. Continue reading →