The documentary addresses the most recent upheavals since the emergence of the cyber world, from the promises of the Internet to big data and artificial intelligence to cyber warfare.
The prefix “cyber” comes from ancient Greek and means something like “to control”. But do people really still have everything under control? Since the invention of the Internet, new technologies have made rapid progress. In addition to the notorious data mining, the advance of artificial intelligence is currently causing a stir, while cyber warfare is becoming worryingly more important in Russia's anti-Western strategy - loosely based on the old Russian "Maskirovka" doctrine of "deception, denial and disinformation".
“We are in quite a mess as a society on this planet.” This sentence from a cyber expert sums up the threat: Postmodern societies are racing against the wall at full speed. The directors Shimon Dotans and Charles Ferguson (Oscar winner in 2008 for the documentary The Inside Job) use excerpts from Hollywood films to show which technological excesses the dream factory has explored on film since “2001: A Space Odyssey”. They document the dizzying developments of cyberspace and also point to the devastating effects of a capitalism that, in its greed for profit, does not stop at any privacy. Engineers see artificial intelligence as the first milestone on the path to enhanced human intelligence - a development that, if left unregulated, cannot rule out a worst-case scenario.