‘Theater Of Thought Review: Werner Herzog Crafts A Bracing Exploration Of Neurotechnology And Consciousness
After filming on all continents, diligent explorer Werner Herzog assembled the United States for the Theater of Thought. However, he has gone too far, exploring one of the last great frontiers, the human brain, from many angles. The result was one of his most painful questions.
In Silicon Valley, as well as in university labs and lecture halls, talk to more than two dozen people working in the latest neurosciences and neurotechnology, an umbrella term for cutting-edge discoveries linking the nervous system with electronics and other devices. . . Duke is a brilliant student who sometimes admires and delights, sometimes doubts and disappoints. Cryogenic pellets, nanoparticles, and optical fibers evoke a satirical and lyrical mixture of awe and fear between massive devices and the understandable blueprints of the layman.
theater of the mindThe Bottom Line is a unique blend of hope, horror, humor and heart in Duke's mind.
Like the 2020 essay Fireball, a film that explores meteorites through chemistry, geology, and mythology in what Joseph Campbell calls the ends of space, Theater of Thought explores the difference between science and poetry. overlapping and sometimes combined. . (Both films have been meticulously edited by Marco Capalpo.) Herzog, a businessman, mathematician, surgeon, and philosopher is interviewed. Just in case she was spending time in the Catskills with her famous theme park. It is worth noting that it contains a clip from a silent Soviet film depicting a character on the verge of death. Another character wanted him to inform the other party. The possibility of communication in the afterlife is one of Herzog's questions experts must consider, and his question guides the documentary from interview to interview, from synapse to synapse.
As the theater looks down on the skull - the only literal glimpse of pulsating gray matter - in short - the film is as deep into metaphysics as it is for brain science. It's also a stark and profound warning: When a computer can read information directly from the brain or send commands directly to the brain, privacy, independence, and self-esteem are at stake.
Moral questions aside, the film begins with a idyllic quiet: Herzog, the film's chief scientific advisor, and neuroscientist Rafael Yusti, side by side on a rock under a tree with thick, glossy leaves, stare at a laptop. You can't see what's going on on screen, nor can you hear what they're saying to each other, but their casual camaraderie hints at the spontaneous outbursts of tenderness that characterize a doctor, as happened when Herzog interviewed Cory Bargmann and Richard Axel. Scientists who marry each other. , surprising them with questions about music, dinner conversations, and maybe even communication with animals. Moments like this underscore an unspoken problem that runs throughout the film: Can a brain-computer interface elicit such an unexpected realization of emotion, sweet, awkward, and fun?
Herzog got a bright smile from Dario Gill, head of research at IBM, when asked about the hunt after a tour of the quantum computing lab. The ocean, another front whose depths are just beginning to be explored, becomes a sub-topic. After the somewhat loaded question, "How stupid is Siri?" Duke, creator of the virtual assistant for artificial intelligence expert Tom Gruber, stars in video footage of Gruber's diving, sparking discussions about mass blindness in schools of fish and human society — dwarf blindness, blindness to destructive actions. Neuroscientist Christoph Koch insists that Herzog interviewed him only after he had gone for a morning walk in Puget Sound and immersed himself in the bliss of being "in full motion...in stray motion."
Another fearless genre defined the mental fortitude of Philip Petty, the tightrope walker who shook the world in 1974 by walking between the Twin Towers (a story told in the documentary Man on the Wire). It's also interesting to see him plying his trade in a rustic New York backyard nearly 50 years later. Duke's visit to Pettit follows his conversation with Joseph Leducs, who is mapping the brain's fear mechanisms.
At the heart of it all lies the mystery of how the striated and complex network, the cerebral cortex, brings about consciousness - a mystery that remains unsolved even though scientists have found ways to communicate with neurons. Managing the nervous system and combating disorders through treatments such as deep brain stimulation. For people who have had a stroke or Parkinson's disease, the results can be miraculous. An engineer shares a prototype of a microchip implant that could restore sight to people with optic nerve damage.
The film does not comment on the fact that animal research is still considered an integral part of the work of many innovators and scientists. The Duke was afraid that people would become guinea pigs. New brain technologies could regulate behavior and thinking in ways that would satisfy bioethicist Sarah Gering. Talk to consumers directly! Thus, the field of neural law is becoming more and more a legal trend. In 2021, while working at the Herzog Theater of Thought, Chile became the first country to change its constitution to protect privacy and personal identity from invasive technology. The document confirms the move without explaining the amendment, which appears to be a possible model for other countries.
His travels across the United States inevitably lead Duke to the screening room at the Old Roxy Theater in San Francisco, where he meets neuroscientist Jack Gallant, who studies the human visual system and deconstructs mental images. Here and in other conversations, another hidden concern emerges about the neural technology close to Duke's heart: Are telepathy and other neural channels implemented by the technology outdated? Or Duke suggests that whatever we think is real is always an illusion. As many ghosts as possible ask us "are we" behind the ghost facade? Thinking about what makes us human through prehistoric evidence, the author asks us to take a closer look at the future of science fiction than we'd like to believe.
