(I'm not quite sure how reviews for documentaries are constructed, so work with me here.)
Timoner chronicles the unpredictable and outrageous undertakings of online pioneer Josh Harris. A brilliant, offbeat, and sometimes volatile man, Harris is, needless to say, a character. As the baby of seven children, Harris spent his formative years in front of the television, more actively reared by the cast of "Gilligan's Island" than by his own mother-- a loveless upbringing that inevitably led to his tight clench on technology. Harris's self-proclaimed visionary status manifests itself in his early involvement with the internet and the dot com industry. A trailblazer far ahead of his time Harris founded Pseudo.com, an online television company with multiple channels-- but Harris's genius far transcended Pseudo.com's parameters. Equipped with more money than he knew what to do with, Harris planned a social experiment that eerily and eloquently predicted the state of individuals's lives in the forthcoming all-encompassing technological age.
The experiment is titled "Quiet: We Live in Public" and calls for a hundred volunteers to completely relinquish their privacy and live together in a bunker in Manhattan. The inhabitants are provided--free of charge, a la Josh Harris-- with all that anyone would need; however, the space is filled with cameras and televisions. The citizens of "Quiet" eat together, shower together, defecate together, have sex with each other--and with a television in each person's pod/bed--they constantly watch each other performing these acts. In other words, everyone--in a way-- is a celebrity; everyone is getting their fifteen minutes of fame.
Occurring in 1999, "Quiet" uncannily resembles the attention-desiring users of today's sites, eg. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and (yes, I'm guilty) Blogspot. "We Live in Public" clearly conveys that technology's pervasive powers mean that, despite the fact that you and I didn't sign up for "Quiet", we all live in public. Although a somewhat terrifying truth, the fact of the matter is that it's reality-- a reality that Josh Harris, however unstable and odd as he is, predicted long ago.
"We Live in Public" is not only an incredible character study but a study on society as a whole. For anyone living in the 21st century, this is a must-see.
even though it covers mostly past events/activities, there is something really futuristic about it, but futuristic in the sense that it seems like an allegorical future for our present. like...think any piece of dystopian lit (brave new world, clockwork orange, etc)--even though they are set in different times and settings, they are speaking about us NOW. i think that's what's so haunting about this doc--it reveals stuff about ourselves that on a day to day basis we fail to recognize, truths in our reality to which we are oblivious.
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