Despite some lofty dialog and cherry-picked quotes by everyone from Norbert Wiener to Wittgenstein, this documentary is a train wreck of thesis, exploration and conclusion.
Let me summarize the entire film for you here so you do not have to view it: In an attempt to understand the evolution of computing and it's future impact on humanity (a noble endeavor), the director takes such a disjointed path that the audience can only draw this conclusion: Rather than joining the "Digerati", computer scientists or other profound government-related technology projects like his contemporaries at Harvard and Berkeley during the 1960's, Ted Kaczynski "may have" developed his anti-technology views and perspectives after being subjected to psychologically stressful mind-control experiments while a student at Harvard.
There you go.
There is certainly a conversation around cybernetics that needs to be had by society, but as it's pointed out emphatically and eloquently multiple times by those who helped orchestrate "the system", killing people to have this debate takes away any legitimacy or credibility Kaczynski had. And the Unabomber is the primary source of counter-argument which the director depends. These repeated encounters destroy the director's agenda (whatever it actually was).
You can fear technology as Kaczynski did or as the director is trying to make you, or you can view it the way Stephen Hawking does: Humans, limited by slow biological evolution, will not be able to compete with machine evolution, and would/(will) be superseded. Hawking believes machines are the natural evolution of humanity and likely our only way to get off the short life of our earth and solar systems, and navigate the universe.
I don't know what I think, but I'd rather not live in fear if possible. And fear of technology, while completely excusable (Ed Snowden, et. al.) is not presented with any effect in this film.
And I still don't know what LSD had to do with the film's premise!
Let me summarize the entire film for you here so you do not have to view it: In an attempt to understand the evolution of computing and it's future impact on humanity (a noble endeavor), the director takes such a disjointed path that the audience can only draw this conclusion: Rather than joining the "Digerati", computer scientists or other profound government-related technology projects like his contemporaries at Harvard and Berkeley during the 1960's, Ted Kaczynski "may have" developed his anti-technology views and perspectives after being subjected to psychologically stressful mind-control experiments while a student at Harvard.
There you go.
There is certainly a conversation around cybernetics that needs to be had by society, but as it's pointed out emphatically and eloquently multiple times by those who helped orchestrate "the system", killing people to have this debate takes away any legitimacy or credibility Kaczynski had. And the Unabomber is the primary source of counter-argument which the director depends. These repeated encounters destroy the director's agenda (whatever it actually was).
You can fear technology as Kaczynski did or as the director is trying to make you, or you can view it the way Stephen Hawking does: Humans, limited by slow biological evolution, will not be able to compete with machine evolution, and would/(will) be superseded. Hawking believes machines are the natural evolution of humanity and likely our only way to get off the short life of our earth and solar systems, and navigate the universe.
I don't know what I think, but I'd rather not live in fear if possible. And fear of technology, while completely excusable (Ed Snowden, et. al.) is not presented with any effect in this film.
And I still don't know what LSD had to do with the film's premise!
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