{"id":3061,"date":"2016-12-02T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T09:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/?p=3061"},"modified":"2022-04-05T16:23:57","modified_gmt":"2022-04-05T16:23:57","slug":"our-digital-humanity-film-series-part-2-lo-and-behold-reveries-of-the-connected-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/2016\/12\/02\/our-digital-humanity-film-series-part-2-lo-and-behold-reveries-of-the-connected-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Digital Humanity Film Series Part 2: “Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"maxresdefault-8\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This year, I had the opportunity to be a member of a group of Winona State students tasked with creating a film series based off of the University\u2019s theme for the year, \u201cOur Digital Humanity.\u201d With this series, we hoped as a group that we could underscore the university\u2019s theme as well as illustrate it through the use of film.<\/p>\n

The film that I presented on, Werner Herzog\u2019s 2016\u2019s documentary “Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World,”\u00a0<\/em>was a great fit for illustrating the theme and worked as a perfect in-between between Charlie Chaplin\u2019s 1936 film “Modern Times”<\/a> (a film that examined society\u2019s response to the integration of technology into their daily culture) and Spike Jonze\u2019s 2014 film “Her”\u00a0<\/em>(a film that looks at the impact technology has made in our society, and how it could influence us in the near-future) by examining the pros and cons of technology\u2019s past, present and future.<\/p>\n

\""Lo<\/a>

“Lo and Behold” documents the history of the internet, including its origins with Leonard Kleinrock.<\/p><\/div>\n

Interestingly enough, the film\u2019s creator, Werner Herzog, is very much an outsider to the technological boom that has grasped our culture. Herzog grew up in Sachrang, a small village, where he had no access to a flushing toilet, telephone, or even running water — he wasn\u2019t even aware of the presence of film until a traveling projectionist came to his school. After living in Sachrang for 12 years, Herzog moved back to Munich, the city he was born, and began to prepare to be a director. Since then, Herzog has been at the forefront of the New German Cinematic Movement and directed over 60 films, most of which are documentaries.<\/p>\n

“Lo and Behold”\u00a0portrays this digitalization of society as a multi-faceted and complex issue: one that has a lot of good, as well as a lot of bad. At the very beginning, we see an enthusiastic professor describing the first use of the Internet: to send a message between two separate computers on opposite ends \u2013 an incredible advancement in communication. Yet, Herzog shows us that with advances like that, we must also accept the consequences. As shown later, that same communication model was used to spread the image of a woman\u2019s disfigured corpse after being in a car crash, an image that later ended up being sent to her still-grieving father.<\/p>\n

\"loandbehold-chimp-robot\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even though the film shows this darkness, it still ends on a positive note by looking to the future. We are still a culture that is determined to use the advances we make for good: whether it is creating controllable prosthetic appendages for those in need, or working to create artificial intelligence, leading minds are striving to move forward in a way that benefits our digital humanity.<\/p>\n

-Jake Nielsen<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year, I had the opportunity to be a member of a group of Winona State students tasked with creating a film series based off of the University\u2019s theme for the year, \u201cOur Digital Humanity.\u201d With this series, we hoped as a group that we could underscore the university\u2019s theme as well as illustrate it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[599,602,600,601,22],"class_list":["post-3061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-improving-our-world","tag-film-series","tag-lo-and-behold-reveries-of-the-connected-world","tag-our-digital-humanity","tag-theme","tag-winona"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7OGye-Nn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3061"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4163,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3061\/revisions\/4163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/improving-our-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}