Sundance Doc Connected Says Internet Can Save the Planet
- 7:00 am |
Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain pictures the internet as a tool for saving the planet, and says as much in her Sundance Film Festival entry Connected. The documentary argues that web surfing triggers tiny spurts of pleasure-inducing dopamine that could push human evolution toward a “global thinking structure” that makes people more mindful of how their actions affect each other and the environment.
To build the case for what she calls a “Declaration of Interdependence,” narrator/guide Shlain compiles a 14 billion-year history of the world from campy archival footage and animation sequences that illustrate familiar facts drawn from the worlds of anthropology, science, politics and art.
Absent startling revelations, the film, subtitled “An Autoblogography About Love, Death & Technology” blends home movies into the mix as Shlain puts big-picture musings into the context of an eventful year in her own life.
“This is not a ‘rah rah’ movie,” Shlain told Wired.com in a phone interview, “but I am hopeful about tools being developed today that enable people to get information about how their actions affect others.”
Building on theories put forth by Shlain’s brain surgeon father, Leonard, who wrote The Alphabet Versus the Goddess and other books, the documentary points toward an upbeat future in which empathy-enhanced consumers could use the web to monitor supply chains, gobble up fewer natural resources and create less waste.
Accentuating the positive, Connected downplays the notion of a morality-neutral technology that also enables ills like cyberbullying, scams, information overload and an increase in Netizens who relate better to computer screens than to people standing next to them on the street.
The hemispheres of human brains, Shlain and her collaborators believe, are being rewired by the internet to become more synchronized. Will the net’s ability to connect far-flung web surfers really prompt a leap in human consciousness? It’s an intriguing prospect, but ancient strains of greed, fear and narcissism have so far proven remarkably resilient.