Customer Reviews

We Live In Public

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is perhaps the most relevant movie I have ever seen on the subject of modern society and the internet. That's an understatement. I wondered at some points if this was a mockumentary, since the claims were unbeleivable, and I'd never even heard of Media-God Josh Harris or his insane experiments. Its not. This man is a founding father of our internet age, for better or worse. His accomplishments and failures will haunt our society forever. When our private lives completely vanish into the public eye, when our most intimate of moments are broadcast willingly, when the sky can see us and becomes a grid of corporate properties, I will look back into the camera and think of one name. Not Big Brother. Josh Harris. This is a baffling, exciting, and disturbing film. Relevant. 5 Stars.

"People are willing to do stupid and dangerous and horrible things in exchange for fame," says journalist Gabriel Snyder, in acclaimed director Ondi Timoner's newest documentary We Live In Public, "and Josh is driven by that quest more than most people I know." The Josh Snyder is speaking of is Josh Harris, the unconventional visionary at the center of We Live in Public and the "stupid and dangerous and horrible things" he is speaking of are well explored in Timoner's explosive and nearly unbelievable film recounting Harris' various exploits in the late '90s and early '00s - the kinds of exploits that only the remarkably rich can engage in. And thanks to his vision and keen foresight at the dawn of the internet, Josh Harris was remarkably rich at the turn of the century.

At the center of Timoner's film, which is more or less a biography on the life and times of an idiosyncratic entrepreneur (Harris), are two bold experiments examining what the increasing role of technology in our lives does to our privacy and our personal lives. In the first, a bizarre projected dubbed "Quiet," Harris spends upwards of $2 million to house 100 people in an underground bunker in New York City for the last 30 days leading up to the turn of the century. Now, housing 100 people in a bunker doesn't sound all that bizarre, but the truly ground breaking part of the project is that the 100 participants were being filmed at all times (eating, sleeping, showering, and even in the bathroom). Each bed (or "pod" as they are called) is equipped with a display monitor and a video camera so that at any time any other person can watch and communicate with you on your "channel." Still, this doesn't sound that bizarre, right? In addition to the constant filming and utter removal of privacy, Harris also added in a firing range (stocked with an assortment of semi-automatic weapons to make any NRA member drool), a mock temple, and an interrogation room where an interrogation artist trained by the CIA attempted to mentally sabotage members of the group with demanding interrogations. Needless to say, the results are a bit disturbing.

The second experiment, "We Live In Public", is a more subdued project in which Harris and his then-girlfriend installed cameras throughout their apartment and attempted to live in full view of the world at all times. What begins as an almost romantic endeavor by a loving couple ends in disaster and eventually leads to Harris undergoing a mental breakdown.

Throughout the film, Timoner uses segments of interviews from various friends and family of Harris to highlight his unique persona. From sending his mother a videotape of himself rather than physically going to visit her on her death bed to his escapades as Luvvy the Clown (a topic you must see to believe), it's clear that Harris has a unique outlook on life. Often called the "Warhol of the Web" - a nickname that he scoffs at in the special features, claiming instead that "I'm Andy Warhol's wet dream!" Harris is often off-putting but never boring.

After winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival last year for We Live In Public, (and previously with 2004's Dig!) Ondi Timoner is now the only director to ever win this prize twice. We Live In Public is a stirring documentary that speaks to the direction our society is heading in a visceral fashion without feeling demanding or pedagogical. Instead, Timoner relies on the vivid life of Josh Harris (and a few brief discussions of the pervasive nature of MySpace and Facebook culture) to paint a clear picture of the direction we are currently pointing in. Similar to virtual reality guru Jaron Lanier's manifesto You Are Not a Gadget, Timoner's film warns of a future when technology consumes us.

As the credits roll, the lyrics to the memorable 1996 Jamiroquai hit "Virtual Insanity" play in the background. And in this context, the lyrics begin to take on an entirely clearer meaning than ever before:
The future's made of virtual insanity, now
Always seem to be governed by this love we have
for useless twisting of our new technology
Oh now there is no sound, for we all live underground

Though the Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary film have already been revealed to be lacking Timoner's film, We Live In Public is easily one of the best documentaries of 2009.

I watched this last night, not really knowing what to expect. It starts out with Josh Harris recording his final goodbye, which he intends to send to his dying Mother whom he does not wish to see again. The way it starts is the way it continues. It is a jaw dropping, eye popping, 15 year documentary of Josh Harris. I had never heard of him before. We learn that he envisioned the virtual world we live in today. He orchestrated different social experiments, one where 100 people lived together in a "Big Brother" style environment for 30 days, and another that included living with his girlfriend with cameras filming everything including a potty camera. Josh Harris at one time was worth 80 million dollars, over time he reduced it to nothing. "We Live in Public" to me was like watching an alcoholic conducting an alcohol experiment, Josh Harris has absolutely no Social Skills, yet he conducted and participated in Social Experimentation. I believe that Josh Harris is just like his Mother, incapable of love and empathy and is as much a victim of his upbringing as he would likely today be diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. Overall "We Live in Public" is a fascinating look back at the internet and it may well give you pause as we contemplate the future.

As someone who lived and worked all the way through the entire rise of the Internet, in the heart of the whole thing (Silicon Valley), I can say without any doubt that the only thing this "documentary" shows is how little NYC had to do with anything related to the Internet.

This terrible waste of time has just about the most horrendous editing you will ever see, made worse by the fact that the creators probably thought they were being artistic, when in fact it's just embarrassingly bad attempt.

The content and subjects of the movie can be described in the same way.

The movie in 50 words or less:

Guy makes money selling an IRC client in the 90s. Noobs call him genius. No one else notices. Some time passes. A warehouse is filled with attention whore do-anything-for-fame types. They have sex and poop in front of cameras. New York adds nothing to the Internet. The end.

The marketing and publicity for this doc presume you've never heard of Josh Harris, but I have. I was a ( very occasional) viewer of the We live in public website, and not too long ago wondered whatever happened to that guy? Now I know.
What I didn't know about was his adventures ( and fortune making) in the dot-com boom, and his social experiment project " Quiet". But what is really interesting about this doc is Josh Harris as a person- trying to tease out the truth from his statements, interviews with those who know him, and his work. Who is he? Prescient predictor of the future? Artist? Businessman? Bad Businessman? Brilliant? Misunderstood? Deluded? Watch this and come to your own conclusion.


I would have watched this DVD even if I weren't slightly familiar with the man, as I like the director's work, but even if you've never heard of her or Josh Harris, this is worth watching.

At first I thought that this movie was going nowhere fast, but it pulled a 180 on me. This is an amazing documentry about an amazing man I have never heard of. This movie has deep psycological conotations and full of what if questionings. There is a certian amount a nudity and humping, if you can deal with that this is a mush watch.

We Live In Public

If one day, dear reader, you wake up and after tea, coffee or whatever breakfast nutrition takes your fancy, you suddenly experience a deep and abiding desire to plumb the worst excesses of the dot com craze, including the subsequent crash and burn that cut the market value of the Nasdaq in half from a level it hasn't even begun to approach in the years since the Spring of 2000, and if along with this sudden urge to revisit the destruction of enterprise value, you also have a hankering to see the corresponding human wasteland and the complete and utter debasement of individual self worth that money can be induced to create, well then friend, you are indeed in luck and We Live In Public is precisely the film for your viewing pleasure.

In glorious and living color, this film will show you the self abuse and degradation highly talented individuals who should have known better willingly subjected themselves to in the belief (misguided as things turned out) that the Internet is one big friendly global village that can provide for our every need, want and whimper for the amazingly low price of nothing down and nothing to pay. Ever. The leader and chief flutist of this Scheherazade was a man named Josh Harris who convinced his deluded minions that "Everything is free, except the video we make of you. That we own." To their enduring chagrin, they discovered that everything wasn't free, that psychic and emotional scars remain even after the cameras stopped rolling.

Strangely, the filmmakers interviewed no one from the New York City police department, the Mayor's office, or the leading press organs. There is a snippet of tape from a New York Times journalist, other than that, the film consists of sound bites from a coterie of Mr. Harris' family, friends, and former inmates at his asylum who still believe they were involved in something wonderful and precious.

Precious. Now that's a film worth seeing.

This documentary was quite chilling and while I might not go as far as to say that the web is creating slavery, some of the points made in the movie from Josh Harris are compelling. Think of this movie as a physical representation of the Internet (Or TV, a little bit of both). People are put in pods (their rooms) where everything they do is on a channel. People had no privacy and in a short time their personalities changed, this aspect of constant surveillance (anybody can watch anybody) creates problems for the human brain and how we deal with our own social problems. If that one aspect of the technology was removed though, would it be slavery? Who knows, it's really up to you. ^_^

Try to imagine your daily existence under constant surveillance. Now imagine that this also applied to everyone else in the world. Your life is viewable to anyone with an Internet connection, while at the same time you may peer into countless numbers of lives. What would happen to the laws of society, or even to one's own moral code, if the concept of privacy was simply to vanish? We Live in Public both answers these questions and poses new ones as to where exactly our society is headed.

The film mainly serves as a biopic of the life and times of Josh Harris, described by the film as "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of." Indeed, Harris does seem a visionary at times; his social experiment "Quiet" and its smaller-scale offshoot "We Live in Public" seem like little if not outright prototypes of reality television. The documentation of the former is where the film truly shines, with director Ondi Timoner providing a harrowing and occasionally terrifying glimpse into the basis of societal breakdown. The detachment from any privacy or intimacy (and at times from any humanity) that is shown by the individuals involved is striking in the way it is bluntly depicted; it also proves to be quite chilling when one realizes that perhaps modern-day society wouldn't be too far off from what's shown here, if given unlimited access to alcohol, women, and other people's lives.

The latter experiment, and indeed the latter half of the film, explores Harris' emotional detachment and gradual withdrawal from society at large. While not as striking as the "Quiet" section on a visceral level, it resonates deeply on an emotional one. Harris fancied himself a veritable puppet-master during "Quiet;" "We Live in Public" and its aftermath, on the other hand, shows him as a remarkably lonely individual. Is the general public truly that dissimilar? Any time we flip on "Jersey Shore" or "The Real World," are we not feverishly peering into the lives of others simply in order to fill some void that exists within our own?

This film is the best documentary I've seen about a social project that explores how too much technology can actually make us less social and more disconnected from each other as human beings. It also is an in encouraging life story of Josh Harris. To be an out of the box thinker Josh Harris has revolutionized how we can maximize the use of the internet in our every day lives. His triumphal rise to the top (with only $900 in his pocket when coming to NY) shows that no matter how much money you start out with you can become a multimillionaire. Much like the book the Alchemist, ... if you follow your heart and your dreams, you can make your true destined fortune fast. It is amazing how sucked in we are to our computers and our pseudo- identities. We can all easily get lost in our social online networks but how often do we take the time to talk to other humans face to face. When this type of communication is our only form of communication, it can only lead to a bad recipe for mankind. No matter how extroverted I feel I am I know I have major moments of antisocialness to still work on. Spending less time and limiting my use of the computer on a daily bases might be a good start to living and appreciating REALITY and what LIFE really has to offer. Get out of your fantasy worlds and wake up and smell the damn roses. :D Enjoy this film. It is a must see!!! 5 Stars and 10 Thumbs up!