Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by maldeh 2438 days ago
Also recommended: "Lo and behold! Reveries of the connected world" by Werner Herzog.
1 comments

I would counter recommend this - I couldn’t make it through it on Netflix.

It seemed like the director had no idea what he was talking about and a lot of the interviewees were non technical people that said things that made no sense (actually no sense - indistinguishable from words strung together to sound profound that were actually meaningless).

I suspect this comment is aimed at segments like this one with Ted Nelson of Hypertext fame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqx6li5dbEY

On first viewing, I too felt it was incomprehensible wordsoup in some sense - but upon learning more about Nelson and the history and context around which his ideas were developed, I've grown to find this interview almost magical.

I would counter that counter recommendation. One has to keep in mind that this is still a Werner Herzog creation - and he's quite an eccentric guy. Think "40% David Lynch".
If you want another attempt at Herzog, I'd recommend https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroszek
This movie was done by non-technical people for non-technical people. When I started to look at this from this point of view - it became really enjoyable.
To me that makes it even worse - rather than teach how something that seems magical to a non-technical person came to be, it just reinforces the idea that it’s not understandable.
Not everything has to be a lesson. Also I think it focused more on philosophical questions rather than implementation side.