Hanging out with the Werner Herzog crews

So this month the CF:G team and community got some very special freebies from the awesome team at DogWoof who are the distribution company for Werner Herzog and his new movie 'Lo and Behold'.

It's a pretty amazing movie, and looks at the good and potentially bad impact of tech on society (exactly the theme of our upcoming CF:G Annual conference opening keynote - we think Werner might have copied it from us, but we like him so it's cool).

As part of our activities with them, they gave us loads of cool freebies. These included special tickets to the online premiere and Q&A with Herzog itself, as well as invites for a special screening of the movie with House of Vans including a Q&A after with our very own CF:G CEO Amali de Alwis.

The movie itself covers loads of very current topics in tech from AI through to trolling and robotics. If you're interested in tech, it is definitely worth a watch (out in cinemas now), and some of our CF:G community (thanks Aseel and Kornelia!) who managed to nab some of those those freebie tickets have kindly written some short reviews of the film below as well. Hope you enjoy and happy viewing!

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Review of : “Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World” by Kornelia Szabo.
 
I was extremely happy when I heard from Code First: Girls that I won tickets to watch Werner Herzog’s new movie to watch at home. Although I watched the trailer before the movie, I did not feel it spoilt it for me as so many trailers do. The film itself consisted of 10 parts, that turns out to be just how the story unfolded itself. Each part discussed a different era and perspective regarding our connected world where nowadays everything is Internet and technology based, meanwhile some people chooses to switch off on purpose.

It was very interesting to learn more about the history of the web, to see historical figures and places where it all started and to put all this into a bigger perspective. It was also very fascinating to see that during such a short period of time how much technology improved and what possibilities to future might hold. We might forget about how connected we are nowadays and how much we rely on technology and not longer than 50 years ago, the Internet, smartphones and all this was just a crazy sci-fi idea. The discussion at the end of the movie was very interesting too, especially to get a better insight what motivators and ideas were present when Werner Herzog created this excellent piece of work.

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Review of : “Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World” by Aseel Mustafa.

The indelible impact that “Lo & Behold” had on me started the moment I sat down to watch the film streaming simultaneously as it premiered at the London Film Festival. I have streamed movies many a times but this was my first experience with an at home virtual ticket; therefore, I was already predisposed to a feeling of cheesy admiration to the web and what it can do for us, which was the perfect mindset for the screening.
 
The opening of the movie alludes back to October 1969 when the first host to host message was successfully sent, that opening was powerful enough to put into perspective how much we take a not-so-mature technological advancement for granted, translation: feeling less entitled to my melt down when my calendar didn’t sync properly across my Wi-Fi enabled devices and ended up messing my whole week!
 
“if we would burn CDs of the world wide data flow for one single day and stack them up in a pile it would reach up to Mars and back” that visual was overwhelming! The movie had a very emotional message; a very doom and gloom one and as I watched, I got more engrossed by all the issues that the internet and its extremities were causing: from bringing the worst in people by allowing bullying to have a much wider reach and protection, to internet addiction to “faraday cage” and super sense illness; and on a research level on radio astronomy and the ability to detect the sun activities and its implications. And mostly how dependent we are on the Internet to the point that only a few will survive if there was ever an apocalyptic Internet shutdown!
 
Being fully aware that this is an artistic piece (subjective documentary!) that it will definitely have some bias to it, that it never touched on how the internet and its applications such as cloud technologies have offered people in all areas of the world financial and medical services that better the lives of millions!
 
In the end: being lost in my own conviction, I hadn’t noticed that it triggered so much in me to go investigate about a plethora of topics from laws governing autonomous cars and A.I. in general, people’s privacy rights on the internet which I never knew dies upon a person’s passing away! How the laws need to be revised; to more scientific topics such as solar flares and radio frequency interference, even the law of large numbers! The film’s emotional treatment opened my eyes to all that comes with this life-altering technology that need to be addressed with more awareness…
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Nugget for security enthusiasts: “people are the weakest link in security; people not the technology!”