Cyber Security Articles & News

Digital Life - Lo and behold

THERE is a room in one of the science buildings in UCLA that is ground zero for the birthplace of the internet. In the 2016 documentary by legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, we get to see that room—complete with a commemorative plaque about the fateful day in Oct. 29, 1969, when the first message was transmitted over a network from one computer in UCLA to another at the Stanford Research Institute 400 miles to the north.

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Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World

Rating: *****
Werner Herzog brings his dour brand of whimsy to LO AND BEHOLD, REVERIES OF THE CONNECTED WORLD, his consideration of cyberspace. The result is a thought-provoking piece that brings up little-known issues and implications, placing them side by side with the more conventional topics of security and dependence.  Indeed, the most arresting moment in the documentary isn’t a security analyst explaining that if were presently engaged in a cyberwar, we would not necessarily know it. Rather, it’s a computer scientist blithely musing on another potential blind spot. That would be the idea that if artificial intelligence arose on the internet, and became self-aware, he didn’t see any reason why it would let us know it’s there, much less consult us about anything it might want to do.  It’s as revelatory as it is disconcerting.

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?Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World? has Herzog tugging at wires of Web

In 10 micro-chapters Werner Herzog, the director of the classic odysseys “Fitzcarraldo” (1982) and “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972), tackles the rise of the Internet 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-driven cars – but the filmmaker’s laid-back yet probing style and quest for getting at the human condition and effects of a digital sphere enveloping society is nothing short of infectious. (It’s viral, if you will.)

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