We Live in Public (2009)
While the popularity of websites like Facebook and Youtube allows us to broadcast our lives for the world to see, few people have carried the idea as far as Josh Harris. An internet pioneer who dreamed of web-tv long before most people even owned a computer, Harris blurred the line between “real” and “virtual” with Quiet, a project in which 150 volunteers lived together in a fully wired underground bunker, broadcasting their every movement on the internet. We Live in Public follows Harris’ rise and fall, from his status as poster child for the dot-com mania of the late 1990s to his eventual retreat from technology altogether. Shot over a 15-year period, the film explores the life of a man undone by the technologies he helped to popularize, while offering a warning for those of us increasingly making ourselves “at home” on the internet.
Presented as part of the Depth of Field 2010-2011 Series: Spaces and Places