All language subtitles for Lo.and.Behold.Reveries.of.the.Connected.World.2016.LiMiTED.720p.BluRay.x264-EiDER

WERNER HERZOG: This is the campus
of the University of California in Los Angeles.

Today, no one of the students
is aware that this is ground zero

of one of the biggest revolutions
we as humans are experiencing.

One of the science buildings here is considered

the birthplace of the internet.

This picture of some of the scientists
involved was taken at this very moment.

The corridors here look repulsive

and yet this one leads
to some sort of a shrine

reconstructed years later,
when its importance had sunk in.

Let's enter this very special place.

We're now entering a sacred location.

lt's the location
where the internet began.

lt's a holy place,
and we've just come back to 1 969,

when the critical events
of the origin began.

That machine over there is the first piece
of the internet equipment ever installed.

lt's a mini computer, which we now call
"a packet switch". This is a. . .

. .military-hardened machine.

You can't break it

and it was meant to sustain itself,
unattended, for years at a time.

This particular machine. . .

. .is so ugly on the inside, it is beautiful.

lt has a unique odour. (Sniffs)

A delicious old odour
from all the old parts.

lt consists of modems. . .

. .CPU, logic units,

memory, power supply,

all the things you need to make
an efficient computer work.

This machine served as the first node
of the internet for decades.

And it was from here
that the first message was sent.

A revolution began.

And the only record we have
of what happened that day is in this log.

On October 29th, 1 969, at 1 0:30 at night,

we enter that we talked to
Stanford Research lnstitute,

host to host, computer to computer.

lt's very much like when,
on Columbus's ship,

the fellow up on top
who first spotted land. . .

. .he noticed it was and he basically made
an entry saying, "We spotted land."

That document and this document have
at least the same equivalent importance.

Now, what was that first message?

Many people don't know it.

All we wanted to do
was log in from our computer

to a computer 400 miles to the north,
up in Stanford Research lnstitute.

To log in, you have to type "L-O-G"

and that machine is smart enough
to type the "l-N".

Now, to make sure
this was happening properly,

we had our programmer
and the programmer up north

connected by a telephone handset,

just to make sure it was going correctly.

So, Charlie typed the "L"
and he said, "You get the L?"

And Bill said, "Yep, l got the L."

He typed the "O". "You get the O?"
"Yep, l got the O."

He typed the "G".
"You get the G?" Crash !

The SRl computer crashed.

So, the first message ever on the internet

was "lo", as in "lo and behold".

We couldn't have asked
for a more succinct,

more powerful,
more prophetic message than "lo".

l've been involved
with the internet, really,

since the very beginning.

There are a number of things that would
characterise that involvement.

One was l started out being the. . .

essentially, the system designer
of the ARPANET, the very first packet net.

l joined DARPA in the early 1 970s
and started two other networking programs,

one a ground-based packet radio net,
like today's cellular phones,

and a satellite net on lntelsat 4,
based on packets.

The internet was about connecting them
all together.

And, uh, the essential elements there

were the protocols
that would make that possible

and the technology
that would be needed inside the net

to enable these different nets
to work together.

WERNER: Vint Cerf, here in 1973,

and Bob Kahn, collaborating together,

created the fundamental protocol
for the internet.

For this, they received

some of the highest honours
our society can bestow.

lmagine, if you will,
sitting down to your morning coffee,

turning on your home computer
to read the day's newspaper.

Well, it's not as far-fetched as it may seem.

1 7 storeys up, in his fashionable
North Beach apartment,

Richard Halloran is calling a local number

that will connect him with a computer
in Columbus, Ohio.

Meanwhile, across town,
in this less-than-fashionable cubby-hole

at the San Francisco Examiner,
these editors are programming

today's copy of the paper
into that same Ohio computer.

When the telephone connection
between these two terminals is made,

the newest form of electronic journalism
lights up Mr Halloran's television

with just about everything the Examiner
prints in its regular addition.

Of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000
home-computer owners in the Bay Area,

The Chronicle reports over 500 have
responded by sending back coupons.

WERNER: This report, considering
the numbers of internet users today,

sounds already like pre-history.

No-one at that time had a clue about
the explosion of information technology.

Today, if you were to burn CDs of
the worldwide data flow for one single day

and stack them up to a pile,
this pile would reach up to Mars and back.

The internet is already
permeating everything.

Even on the lnternational Space Station

a phone call from one module to the next
goes via the internet.

But how do we keep it running?

How do we guard it?

l still have a copy of the phone directory
from the late 1 970s

of everybody who was on the internet

and it was a document about that thick

and it had the name, address
and telephone number of every single person.

Actually, it had it twice, because it had
it once sorted by their email address

and once sorted by their actual name.

So, if you had a problem with anybody,
you could look them up, you could find them.

You could find who the actual person was
associated with that email address.

And, still today, l thumb through that

and, you know, it's a surprising fraction
of the people l actually knew.

For example, there were
two other Dannys on the internet

and l knew them both -
l still know them both.

Of course, now,
you can't even comprehend the idea

of a directory that contains
the name of everybody.

WERNER: Today, we couldn't know exactly.

The directory might be
some 72 miles thick.

The capacity on the ith channel. . .

. .should be the traffic on the ith channel
over the speed of the ith channel,

plus how much is left over.

That's how much. . .
how much capacity is left over.

And you split it, according to the square root
of the traffic on that channel,

over the summation of the square root
over all channels.

DANNY HlLLlS: The way that the internet works,

there's no fixed route
that a message takes.

ln the early days of the protocol,
there was a kind of a bug and one of the. . .

computers actually had a hardware failure

that made it believe that it could get
a message to some place in negative time.

So, of course,
every message in the internet

did better by sending it
through that computer,

because it subtracted the time. . .

. .required to send the message
and so all the messages in the internet

started getting sent through that computer,
which got slower and slower.

So the internet kind of started
to grind to a halt.

The mean response time now will look like this.

lt will be equal to the average path length

times the summation of the square root

of the traffic on the j channel

over the sum of all traffics. . .

. .summed over all channels. . .squared. . .

. .over Mu C, one minus n bar Rho.

Whatever that equation means, it tells you
what the minimum response time will be

for a network once it's optimised.

The computer was claiming
that it could deliver the message

before you even sent it.

So, if you had a Post Office like that,
of course you would use it. Right?

This was a simplified,
but exact model, at the time.

Now we have other aspects of it,

but it's basically the underlying principles
of the network.

And one of the things we found, surprisingly,

was that the larger the network is,
the far more efficient it becomes.

WERNER: Like a gambling casino

that certainly makes money if you have
millions of gamblers at the slot machines?

very much so. You've articulated
what we call "the law of large numbers".

The law of large numbers says that
a large population of unpredictable players -

or messages - collectively behaves
in a very predictable fashion.

A fashion we can write down exactly.

And, therefore, we can predict the performance
of a network when it's large.

The underlying technology
has scaled by a factor of a million

in computational speed, in bandwidth
of communications, in storage capacity

and it may go for another decade
to a factor of a billion or even a trillion.

Nothing in the history of mankind
has ever worked

as a technological contribution
over that span of. . .of growth.

WERNER: Back to the very early times,

times of speculative concepts
of a connected world.

ln the early '60s, many years before
the first Apple personal computer,

a young thinker, Ted Nelson,

had his own ideas
about creating a computer network.

The web, as we know it,
took a different route,

but Nelson's ideas are still dormant.

TED NELSON: lt was an experience
of water and interconnection.

l was with my grandparents
in a rowboat in Chicago.

So l must have been five years old
and l was trailing my hand in the water.

And l thought about how the water
was moving around my fingers,

opening on one side
and closing on the other.

And that changing system of relationships,
where everything was kind of similar,

kind of similar, kind of the same
and yet different,

that was so difficult
to visualise and express.

And just generalising that
to the entire universe,

that the world is a system
of ever-changing relationships

and structures,

struck me as. . .

a vast truth, which it is.

And. . . So, interconnection
and expressing that interconnection

has been the centre of all my thinking.

And all my computer work
has been about expressing and representing

and showing interconnection
among writings, especially.

And writing is the process of reducing

a tapestry of interconnection
to a narrow sequence.

And this is, in a sense, illicit.
This is. . .

This is a wrongful compression
of what should spread out.

ln today's computers, they betrayed that,

because there is no system
for a decent cut and paste.

They changed the meanings of the words
"cut" and "paste"

and pretended it was the same thing.

So a guy named Larry Tessler,
whom l consider to be a good friend,

nevertheless, changed those words.

l consider that a crime against humanity,

and he doesn't understand why,
because humanity has no decent writing tools.

ln any case, this is the problem of
interconnection and representation

and sequentialisation, all. . .

. .similar to the issue of water.

So here we have a parallel presentation,

that shows a quotation
connected to its original context.

"ln the beginning, God created the heaven
and the earth." And where is that from?

That is from the King James Bible.

So we can step down to the next quotation.

"Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight."

And that is from. . .
the Alphabet of Ben Sira.

And so, as we pull back, we can see
successive pages coming up

to connect with their sources
or with their linked contents.

WERNER: His vision of links
never materialised.

By some,
he was labelled insane for clinging on.

There are two contradictory slogans.
One is that continuing to do the same thing

and expecting a different result
is the definition of insanity.

On the other hand,
"lf at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

l prefer the latter, because l don't want to be
remembered as the guy who didn't.

WERNER: No, to. . .to us,

you appear to be the only one around
who is clinically sane.

No-one has ever said that before!

Usually, l hear the opposite.

Thank you very much for talking with us.

lt was wonderful.

(Werner laughs)

Marvellous. What a. . . What a team.

- (Camera bleeps)
- Yes, now it's your turn.

WERNER: Today, the sheer numbers
of unpredictable players on the internet

has led to some of its greatest glories.

Fundamental research into cancer, AlDS
and other diseases

has been slowed down
by a complex problem,

which has to do with
the intricate folding of molecules.

Scientists using super computers
could not solve it.

Adrien Treuille was one of the creators
of a video game

calling upon the community of video gamers
out there in the world.

Here we can see an RNA molecule

folded up into, uh, this beautiful helical pattern.

lt forms a helix.

And, uh, the amazing thing
is that this pattern

is formed out very, very simple rules,

which pull it together and create this shape.

And so it's a little bit like. . .uh. . .

you can think of your hands as. . .

There are simple rules
which determine how it can bend

and then there are certain ways
in which it loves to come together

to form a compact shape

and that's just what these molecules
are doing in the body.

And your shirts?
For example, you are into shirt folding?

These molecules. . .fold up
in much the same way that a shirt folds.

You can imagine it starts
completely unfolded

and not at all suitable
to put in your drawer,

but if you follow very, very simple rules,
it becomes this beautiful package

that you can then, uh, store and. . .
and show.

We took the latest scientific models

of, uh, of biomolecule folding

and we created a game

and we put it on the web,
without knowing what would happen.

And without knowing
if it would be fun, at all,

if anyone would come.

And. . . lnstantly, people arrived
and they broke down the computers.

We had to build new computers
and they, uh, and they played

and they spoke with one another

and they taught one another
about the science, as non-experts.

And they began reading papers
and they began studying and understanding.

We have lawyers.
We have school kids.

Um. . . We have retired people.

We have bedridden people.
We have grandmas.

Uh. . . Every. . . lt's really everyone
from age ten to age 1 00.

WERNER: This idea was impossible
before the internet

and the response was stunning.

within days, hundreds of thousands
joined in and they solved the puzzle.

The world responded and it was beautiful.

And here is where you design a new molecule.

And, in many ways,

we tried to. . .

. .subliminally, you might say. . .

. .help the players understand

and inhabit the world of the molecule.

So we placed the whole game in this water

and we put all of these little bubbles
in the background,

but they're part of the story
of what's happening.

Each molecule has its own sound.

And these sounds are specifically designed,

so that when the molecule is well folded,
they form harmonies.

(High-pitched beep)

(Deeper beep)

And if something doesn't fit together,
it will form a dissonance.

(Beeps)

lt's actually kind of hard to make it do it!

These are real chemical results

of actual molecules that we players designed
and we built them.

So we say EteRNA is played by humans,
but scored by nature.

ln other words, nature determines who wins
and who loses the game and not science.

WERNER: The solutions of the video gamers
are not just fantasies.

They are verifiable
and can be synthesised in the lab.

Sebastian Thrun
is also reaching out into the world.

Originally, he has become famous
with self-driving cars.

My dream is to go and give
every human being a chance

and the best way to do this is education,
so we built this little company,

that we called Udacity,

that offers education for free.

We have hundreds of thousands of students

staying with us at any
given point in time.

We've been amazed how fast
our student base has grown.

There's really a thirst for education.

As the machines are becoming smarter,
l think people want to become smarter,

people want to make a contribution.

lt's harder and harder to make a contribution,
even harder in the future,

so we've really got to go
and do something for ourselves

and the best thing we can do is,
l think, education.

ln the very beginning
of my journey into education,

l had a chance to teach a class online
and teach a class at Stanford.

At Stanford, we got 200 students.

l consider myself an extremely great teacher,
so l get a large class,

but online we got 1 60,000 students.

1 60,000.

And when we finally finished this class,

we were able to stack-rank
the Stanford students,

who are the most privileged
and most selected students,

with the students from the open world

and the top 41 2 students,
they weren't at Stanford.

The best performing Stanford student
was number 41 3, out of a class of 200.

That opened my eyes and l realised,

"My God, for every great Stanford student,
there is 41 2 amazingly great,

even better, students in the world

that don't make it to Stanford."

MAN: Just before heading into
the mountain section of the course,

Stanley tracked down
and passed the crippled Highlander,

putting Stanford Racing Team's
volkswagen Touareg

into the leader position
and effectively ending Highlander's bid for glory.

As Stanley crosses the finish line,

the Stanford Racing Team
has made its way into the history books.

WERNER: This was Sebastian Thrun's
moment of glory back in 2005.

Most of his competitors
were a sorry sight.

History has already been made,
as Highlander crosses the eight-mile mark,

further than any vehicle travelled
in the inaugural Grand Challenge.

20 more teams followed the big three
out of the gate,

all hoping to complete the 1 32-mile course
in a winning time.

Team DAD,
with its rotating cluster of sensors,

sped off the line, making up ground
and passing Team Axion in the process.

Team ENSCO's buggy-style robot, Dexter,

also left the line with a full head of steam,

fiercely attacking the desert terrain.

Kat-5, the Ford Escape hybrid,
from Louisiana's Gray team

eased its way past the crowd.

And Terramax, the 1 6-ton cargo hauler,

left the gate determined to finish the course.

WERNER: Autonomous cars
are developing rapidly.

Today, you don't see big radar installations
or tons of equipment.

So our primary objective when we built this car
was to basically make it look

very normal on the outside and the inside.

The vehicle can send information
about what it is seeing to the internet,

which can be useful
to other vehicles on the road.

lt can also download information
about what is happening on the roads,

before it reaches an accident area
or a traffic jam, for example.

WERNER: So the internet
will be decisive very soon?

The internet will play
a very important role in this, yes.

Can you open it? lt must be packed
with electronics. Show us.

So just like we humans have our brains

to basically process all the incoming signals,

we need to have computers,
which process all the signals from the LiDARs

and the radars and the cameras.

WERNER: l can't see anything.

Really, there's nothing to see.

lt's a completely useable empty trunk space,
but hidden behind. . .

. .under the. . .trunk. . .
is a set of computers.

There are four computers,

each with four so-called
processing cores.

So it's really equal to 1 6
personal computing machines,

which basically crunch all the data
coming in from sensors.

These dots that you see are basically
reflections from laser beams,

from the laser LIDAR sensors on the car.

They emIt lIght beams, hIt obstacles

and they come back as reflectIons
and they show up as dots.

But It only sees a vIrtual world.

lt really, lIterally, sees a vIrtual world.

The bIg questIon, basIcally,
Is does It understand the ethIcs of a human?

Does It understand
the values of human socIety?

For example, our vehIcle,
what It would lIke to do, basIcally,

Is not hIt anybody,
as the hIghest prIorIty.

And then, If It has to hIt somethIng,

It would prefer to hIt somethIng than somebody.

But what It really wants to do
Is not hIt anythIng or anybody, at all.

WERNER: But who is going to be liable
in case of an accident?

The on-board computer,

its designer, the GPS system,

the internet or the driver
who eats his breakfast?

When a car makes a mIstake
and learns from It,

that experIence Is Instantaneously shared
wIth all the other cars.

So all the other cars learn, as well.
lt's somethIng that people can't do very well.

So, If l make a mIstake -
l have made many In drIvIng -

then l can commIserate and l can Improve,
but nobody else learns from It.

When a self-drIvIng car makes a mIstake,
automatIcally, all the other cars know about It,

IncludIng all future unborn cars,
wIll never make that same mIstake agaIn.

WhIch means the abIlIty for cars
to develop an artIfIcIal IntellIgence

Is so much greater than the abIlIty
of people to keep up wIth them.

Let me show you one of our robots.

ThIs robot essentIally has four wheels

and each of these wheels have
these tIny rollers on them.

What thIs allows thIs robot to do Is,
essentIally, to drIve sIdeways,

as well as forwards, as well as turn,

wIthout havIng to do anythIng
lIke parallel-parkIng manoeuvres.

So that makes these robots
extremely versatIle In theIr motIon.

To kIck the ball,
what these robots have Is a maIn kIcker,

whIch slIdes the length of the robot
and kIcks the ball forward.

We also have a chIpkIcker,
whIch can kIck the ball upward

and that makes the ball go up Into the aIr.

WERNER: These robots are autonomous.

Nobody steers them with a joystick.

Once a defender Is In place,

It'll be a bIt more challengIng
for thIs robot to score.

ln the RoboCup, thIs year,
we have not let In a sIngle goal,

although we scored 48 goals In total
agaInst the opponents.

- So you are World ChampIons?
- We are.

We came fIrst, thIs year,
In the RoboCup InternatIonal competItIon.

The blue robots need to have
an IndIrect free kIck,

so they're fIgurIng out
how they should pass between themselves.

WERNER: Could thIs team eventually beat
the real BrazIlIan football team?

That Is the goal of RoboCup.

That Is, by 2050,
to have a team of soccer-playIng robots,

whIch can defeat the FlFA World ChampIons,
and, uh, we'll see It happen.

l'm. . . l'm very hopeful
that we'll actually get a team of robots,

whIch are confIdent enough
and smart and IntellIgent enough

to actually beat the World ChampIons In 2050.

Better than MessI, Ronaldo and Neymar?

Um. . . lt sounds dIffIcult,
but we can get there.

We can get there.

We have a certaIn reverence for Robot 8.

l mean, to us, sayIng "Robot 8"

Is equal to someone sayIng
"MessI" or "Ronaldo" or somethIng.

lt's the same.

ThIs, here, Is Robot 8.

lt's very IdentIfIable, because Its
pattern Includes four green dots on top

and. . .It's. . .

lt's one of our favourItes, actually.

WERNER: BeautIful.

- Do you love It?
- Yes. We do.

We do love Robot 8.

The day NIkkI passed away,
we were scheduled to see a psychIatrIst.

She'd had some. . .

. .psychotIc Issues, where she had
a braIn tumour when she was very young,

and It was tIme to do
some research on her.

l thInk she was feelIng nervous, that,
If she were to go to thIs appoIntment,

she mIght get stuck In the hospItal,
because that had happened before.

And. . .

at some poInt, a couple of hours
before her appoIntment, she. . .left the house.

She took. . .CrIsto's Porsche

and drove away.

l saw all the polIce and l started to walk
down the on-ramp

and they stopped me and they saId
l wasn't allowed down there.

And l asked If It was my daughter In the car,
what car It was.

They wouldn't gIve me any InformatIon.

And then a crane lIfted up the car.

And once It lIfted up the car,
l realIsed It was the Porsche.

WERNER: Adding to the tragedy,
a first-responder took photos

of the nearly-decapitated head of the girl

and emailed it to some friends.

Almost instantly,
the pictures were out on the internet

and hundreds of thousands,
possibly millions, clicked on them.

Hoping to avoid
a new wave of sick curiosity,

we are here, not even showing
a picture of Nikki alive,

only a place in the house she liked.

Up untIl l saw the. . .pIctures on
the Internet, l had an Image of NIkkI. . .

. .as a perfect. . .

a perfect face, a perfect. . .um. . .um. . .

. .condItIon.

The coroner told us. . .
The only thIng the coroner told us Is that

a portIon of her thumb had been. . .
severed In the accIdent. . .

. .and that she had a head trauma,
but they never gave us any detaIl.

So l always focused on the thumb.

l receIved emaIls wIth the. . .
wIth the pIctures attached.

And It was. . .a short tIme after the accIdent.

Um. . .

lt was dIsguIsed.
l dIdn't know who the emaIl came from.

And l opened It up.

And the bad ones
were very, um, hateful. . .

. .very, um, hateful towards me,

towards NIkkI, towards our famIly.

lt saId, "Dead GIrl WalkIng,
whoo-hoo, Daddy, l'm stIll alIve."

- Whoo-hoo?
- Whoo-hoo.

Do you stIll feel the paIn
when you receIve thIs?

Yes.

- And It's never goIng to leave you?
- Never.

Some of the hate mail was so unspeakably
horrifying that we cannot repeat it here.

We were told there was nothIng
that could be done,

because there's no law In place for. . .

. .pIctures of deceased people,

because, when they pass away,
theIr prIvacy rIghts go wIth them.

l dIdn't know such depravIty
exIsted In humans.

And l thInk dogs treat theIr kInd
better than humans treat theIr kInd.

lt's just there Is no dIgnIty or respect
on the Internet,

because we're not held accountable,
nobody's there to tell us not to.

l have always belIeved that the Internet
Is a manIfestatIon

of the AntIchrIst, of evIl Itself.

lt Is the spIrIt of evIl.

And l feel lIke It's runnIng through. . .

. .everybody on earth

and It's. . .claImIng Its vIctorIes
In those people that are also evIl.

WERNER: west Virginia, the small town
of Green Bank in Appalachia.

What you're seeIng behInd me
Is a very large telescope,

1 00 metres In dIameter.

But Instead of pIckIng up the lIght,
as normal telescopes do,

It pIcks up the radIo waves
that are comIng from the unIverse,

from objects out there
as close as the planets,

but as far as, actually, the BIg Bang.

WERNER: The telescope discovered
the black hole in our own galaxy,

the Milky way.

In the visitors' centre,
you can roll your coins into a funnel,

which resembles a black hole.

Your coins indeed disappear irretrievably.

lf there was a cIvIlIsatIon lIke ours
on a nearby planet,

we could almost certaInly pIck up
some of theIr televIsIon statIons,

perhaps some of theIr radar.

Who knows what?

ThIs collectIng area
Is several acres In. . .In sIze

and It can pIck up enormous sIgnals
from an enormous dIstance,

but they've travelled so far,
that they are so faInt, that, typIcally,

they contaIn a lot less energy

than the energy of a fallIng snowflake
settlIng on the ground.

The enemy of radIo astronomy

Is the natural radIo sIgnals
that we make on earth,

eIther delIberately or accIdentally.

Uh, thIngs lIke mIcrowave ovens
can emIt radIatIon,

whIch can blInd us to the sIgnals
that are comIng from the stars.

Cell phones are
bIllIons of bIllIons of tImes stronger

than the faInt sIgnals we're lookIng for.

SatellItes, they beam straIght down on us.

- MusIc statIons?
- MusIc statIons, yes.

- PlayIng ElvIs?
- PlayIng ElvIs!

We've managed to keep
cell phone transmIssIons out.

Your smart phones are dumb here.
They just do not work.

We really try to keep
wIreless transmIssIons of any kInd

suppressed wIthIn about ten mIles
of the observatory.

For a long tIme,
we had a fleet of chequered dIesels

and these were the standard New York CIty
cabs and they were very precIous to us,

because they were the perfect vehIcle
for radIo astronomers.

These do not have spark plugs.
They don't make noIse.

(BIrdsong)

WERNER: ln the forest near the telescope,
we met a modern-day hermit.

So, see? l've fInally gone hIgh-tech !

l've got a faucet Installed.

Really makes a dIfference, l have to say.

l became very Ill
from radIatIon sIckness In 1 996.

Um. . . And l. . . l lost 50lb.

l nearly dIed. . .uh, three tImes.

And l. . . l became reactIve
to all the wIreless-radIatIon sIgnals,

when all the cell phones went up.

They went up In massIve numbers In 1 996.

And l trIed to do all kInd of treatment.

l moved. l lost my career.

l was workIng as an archItect In Honolulu.

l had to be separated
from my famIly and chIldren.

And, fInally, l heard about thIs In 201 1 .

And as soon as l heard
there was a place wIth no cell towers,

l was here In 48 hours.

SometImes, If l have
really bad reactIons to radIatIon,

l actually wIll sleep on the ground.
l feel better on the ground.

And there may be a scIence to thIs.
They say that the ground emIts 7.83 hertz

and It's the natural rhythm
for anImals and humans.

l also sleep In my car,
whIch l InstInctIvely dId In the begInnIng.

l later learned that It acts lIke
a partIal Faraday cage.

The metal keeps out
a lot of the radIatIon.

ThIs place In Green Bank Is wonderful.

lt's not perfect, but l can go outsIde.

l can see the trees. l can see the sky.
l can see the stars.

When l lIved In the Faraday cage,
l had to lIve In a box

and l only left the box when l wanted to go
to the bathroom or to use the shower.

OtherwIse, l stayed In that box day and nIght.

WERNER: ln a cage?
- ln a Faraday cage.

How long?

Oh, a couple of years.

Several years.

l had a mattress
and l dIdn't have a place to stand up.

l had to stay on the bed the entIre tIme.

My husband went grocery shoppIng.

He cooked the food.
He would brIng and serve me the food.

We'd open the door, he'd hand me the plate
and l'd eat InsIde the Faraday cage.

l've heard It also called as "a super sense".

That we just have thIs abIlIty to,
for whatever reason, feel these frequencIes.

lt's a very legItImate Illness.

But l. . . At thIs poInt, l don't consIder It a gIft.

l would gIve anythIng to gIve It back.

You're the refugee now?

l. . . Yes, l don't know what to call myself.

ThIs Is brand-new and l just want people
to know that thIs type of Illness. . .

And doctors, l really want them to hear
that thIs Is a legItImate Illness.

Um. . . And It affects our lIves tremendously,
you have no Idea.

When you go home today,
after thIs IntervIew,

you have the luxury of goIng home
to your famIlIar surroundIngs.

You have that luxury
to go back to your famIlIes.

l haven't had that
In four and a half years.

l haven't had any stabIlIty.

And l just have to Impress upon you

how serIous thIs Is
for those of us that are sufferIng.

And l'm extremely grateful
that there Is a locatIon here

where l am no longer In paIn.

Or whatever type of Irreparable harm
may be beIng done to my body

wIll be eIther suspended
or temporarIly arrested.

(LIvely fIddle musIc)

There Is a lot more communIty InteractIon
In a place lIke thIs,

l thInk, because of the absence
of the cellular technology

and also because of the IsolatIon

of a rural communIty
In such a beautIful place lIke thIs.

And, yes, l do play the fIddle
and the banjo at nIght.

(LIvely jIg)

♪ My old lady gets mad at me,
she gets drunk on gInger tea

♪ She Is good and she Is bad,
gIve me the devIl when she gets mad

♪ GoIng up CrIpple Creek, goIng on a run

♪ GoIng up CrIpple Creek
to have a lIttle fun

♪ l'll raIse my brItches then to my knees,
l'll wade old CrIpple Creek when l please

(BIrdsong)

WERNER: The state of washington
across the continent.

ln an idyllic forest not far from Seattle,

a REhab centRE for internet addiction
named "RESTART" was established.

Well, there are so many of these severe cases.

For Instance, In South Korea, there was
the case of a couple that had a young baby

and they were very much addIcted to a game

that they went to play,
whIle neglectIng theIr chIld at home.

And thIs baby eventually starved to death
and they went to jaIl for thIs.

But It Is because they were hooked on a game
and, IronIcally, It was a game

In whIch they were takIng care of
and nurturIng, In the game, a young gIrl,

but, as they were doIng that,
theIr own chIld was starvIng to death.

Shortly after we opened reSTART,
we got a call from a stepmom.

Her stepson was lIvIng wIth hIs grandmother

and had just had hIs leg amputated,

because he'd developed a thrombosIs
In hIs leg from lack of movement.

So we. . .

We know of cases, uh, many cases happenIng
In Korea and ChIna,

of people who are dyIng at the computer

because they are playIng for
40, 50, 60 hours at a tIme and not. . .

and completely neglectIng
theIr body's physIcal needs.

WERNER: lt is not uncommon
that in South KoREa

teenage video gamers put on diapers.

This way, they avoid losing points
by going to the bathroom.

WERNER: Tom, you do not need
any further introduction. This was great.

My lowest point came at
the beginning of this year.

New Year's Eve,
l had lost a job.

l was losing my girlfriend,

my family, my relations
were very strained,

and l tried to drink myself to death.

Suicide?

l was playing video games
1 6 hours a day, often drunk.

l watched porn a lot.

And l just had given up.

l had no future.
l had no will to live.

l was just waiting for the timer to run out.

l was in my spring quarter in college

and l was doing nothing except sleeping
about six hours a day

and playing video games
and absolutely not attending any of my classes,

not doing any of my work
and lying to my parents about my progress.

So it was a lot of lying, manipulation,
isolation, especially,

which are all common things for addicts,

but mine were pretty much sleep

and, you know, interact with my addiction.

Did you adopt certain characters
that became almost like you?

(Sighs)

l'm not sure l'm comfortable with that,
cos l'm still in the phase

where thinking too deeply
about my own intricacies could set me off,

could really start that craving
and start those withdrawal symptoms again.

l wanted very much to discuss
fictional characters with Chloe,

like the malevolent druid dwarf -
or whoever these figures are -

but l had to desist.

The real danger to gaming is when. . .

. .you. . .when l stopped being present
in the real world. . .

. .more often than l was in the game world.

lf. . . lf you get to the point where. . .

. .you're thinking about the game
more than you're thinking about real life,

what you're gonna do for food,
what you're gonna do the next day or two,

you know, you're not thinking about
a relationship or a job or a career.

lf you're thinking about the game,
it's a problem.

Because, eventually, it will get
in the way of everything real.

WERNER: Our sun, the giver of life.

At the same time,
it is hostiIe, destructive.

Protuberances, unimaginable in size,
are being hurled into the universe.

These flares may become
the undoing of modern civilisation.

Well, the best known historical example
of a very large solar flare

is an event called "the Carrington Event",
which happened in 1 859.

This was observed by an astronomer named
Carrington, who saw a patch of the sun,

as he was monitoring sun spots,
grow brighter.

ln those days, the predominant form
of technology was the telegraph.

That was our main form of communication.

And this very, very large flare that happened -

that created a brightness change so great

that Carrington could actually see it with his eye,
which is very uncommon -

actually induced currents in telegraph wires

that created fires in the paper
of the telegraph machines.

There's even reports from that time

of aurora being seen
as far south as the equator.

And there being aurora so bright
at the northern latitudes

that it was possible
to read by them at night.

We've been fortunate that nothing
as large as the Carrington Event

has happened in these times
of modern technology,

but even the smaller solar-flare events
that we do see

do disrupt our communications

and create outages in our power grid
and disruptions for our satellites.

(Explosions)

(Crowd gasps)

WOMAN: Oh, my God !

MAN: What the fuck?

WOMAN: What was that?

WERNER: New York City.

What Hurricane Sandy caused here
could happen on a worldwide scale

and much worse.

No electricity, no internet,

no drinking water, no flushing of toilets,

no gas and no shopping.

TV: All you could see was the outline
of the hospital against a darkened sky.

A lone flashlight up in one of
the hospital rooms there,

as doctors and nurses
rushed from patient to patient.

Out front, ambulances. These images from
my iPhone, as we approach the hospital.

Just one of the nearly 300 patients,

who were, one by one,
brought out and taken to safety.

What we got going on here is a complete
black-out in New York City and. . .

l'm on the third floor of Clear Channel,
where Z1 00, KTU, Lite fm, Q,

we're all located on the third floor.

Every station is off the air in New York City.

l don't think it's ever happened
in the history of broadcasting in New York.

lt's like a Will Smith movie, man.
lt's very weird.

very weird. And l feel kind of helpless,
because l'm glad l'm here and l'm safe,

but there's a lot of crap
going on at home.

- My neighbours tell me it's a big mess.
- Yeah.

So l'm nervous about
what l'm gonna head home to tomorrow.

What's up?

RADlO DJ: This is a control room.

WERNER: Meet Lawrence Krauss.

As a cosmologist, he is studying
the origins of our universe.

Much of his attention
has been focused on our planet.

lf there's a solar flare,

if you destroyed the information fabric
of the world right now,

modern civilisation would collapse.

Hundreds of millions of people will die.
Billions of people will die.

The world will become. . .from. . .

for every. . .for people like you and me,
unimaginably ugly, difficult and. . .

. .and there's a great likelihood
that l couldn't survive.

lf the internet shuts down,

people will not remember
how they used to live before that.

l start to think of Maslow's
hierarchy of needs.

l mean, let's get back to the base of the pyramid
and think about food and shelter.

You have food networks that are hugely
dependent on being able to route digitally

what the needs are and where.

And, through efficiencies created
when the network is working well,

you don't have warehouses near people
stocked to the brim with food.

lf you disrupt those networks, l imagine. . .
Uh, what do they say?

"Civilisation is always about
four square meals away from utter ruin."

That's something that it wouldn't be bad
to. . .to prepare for.

As we've thought about an internet of things,
where often for purely. . .

looked at at this moment,
unnecessary reasons,

we not only attach daily objects
to the internet,

but make them reliant on that internet
connection in order to function properly.

So the idea that our standard appliances
couldn't work without connectivity,

um, that we wouldn't be able to get. . .uh. . .

. .uh, to a restaurant

that, in turn, would be able to get
to food and to organise staff. . .

l suspect, however,
that some individuals will survive.

Let us remember, that we come from
a background where, at one point. . .

. .there were less than
a thousand individuals alive,

probably down in south. . .
the southern part of Africa,

and we were a hair's breath away from. . .
from disappearing as a species.

LUClANNE WALKOWlCZ: We have no control
over what the sun chooses to do.

We do know that there is a solar cycle.

So there are times of high activity,
when there are many flares,

and times of low activity,
when there are relatively few.

Events like the Carrington Event appear to be
fairly uncommon, but not non-existent.

They're not single, isolated events.
We do see that flares are repeatable.

lt's just that the large ones are
less common than the small ones.

So, by observing other stars, actually,
we can get some idea of how frequently

these things happen and it seems to be
every few hundred years or so.

So, it's really a matter of time
before we have a large solar flare.

- Um, not a matter. . .
- lt's when?

Yes. Not a matter of
"if" we'll have a large solar flare.

Will we disappear as a species?

Again, Werner,

l can't tell you,
because l don't make predictions.

lt will be unimaginably bad
and l prefer to not think about it right now.

WERNER: Las Vegas, Nevada.

One of the casinos
is preparing to host DefCon,

the annual convention
of the hacker community.

In Iess than two decades,
it has grown to 20,000 participants.

At Ieast a thousand of them wiII be FBI,
the ClA, the Chinese secret service

and other interested parties.

We are about to meet Kevin Mitnick,
a demigod among the community of hackers.

Just mentioning his name here
makes everyone fall silent in awe.

Am l proud of being
the world's most famous hacker?

Um, it's a. . . lt's a title
that's kind of cool to have, but, um. . .

l had a lot of trials and tribulations
to get to that point.

A lot of bad happened in my life, like,
for example, going to a federal prison.

So it's a title that was earned,
but l took the hard road.

When l was a federal fugitive,

l was really concerned, obviously,
about getting arrested.

So what l did is l hacked into
the cell phone company,

one of the cell phone companies
in Los Angeles,

and through what we call "metadata". . .

Now, it's interesting, because nowadays,
with the revelations of Edward Snowden,

he talked about metadata being very. . .

critical in the NSA's ability
to track us and surveil us.

And the NSA says, "Oh, it's only metadata.
lt doesn't mean anything."

Well, let me tell you
how l was able to use metadata

to track the FBl in the 1 990s.

l was able to hack into the cell phone
company and l was able to identify

the phone numbers that belonged to the FBl
white-collar crime squad in Los Angeles.

And l was able to look at their phone. . .

Not at. . . l couldn't get the content of the call,

but l could see who they called
and who called them.

So l was able to get a lot of intelligence
and then what l was able to do is,

through this device,
l was able to program this device

with all the FBl's cell phone numbers

of the people that were in charge of
my investigation.

lt would start sending me pager alerts,

that the FBl's cell phone is here,
you know, within a mile.

So, what l did that night is l took all my
computer stuff, my floppy disks, my CDs,

anything that was technology-related,
l put it at a friend's house

and then l went to Winchell's Donuts.

And l got a big. . . l think it was
a 24-box of, you know, donuts.

And l took a Sharpie
and wrote "FBl donuts" on the box.

l put it in the refrigerator,

and on a big Post-it note
outside my refrigerator. . .

You know the logo for lntel,
it says, "lntel lnside"?

l put "FBl donuts inside"
and stuck it on the refrigerator.

And it just so happens,
at 6am that morning, l. . . l. . . l wake up.

How l wake up is l hear somebody
jiggling the door.

The FBl knocks. They don't jiggle doors.
l go, "Who is it?" Just instinctively.

l thought someone was trying to break in.

"FBl ! Open up! Open up!"

And they're looking for anything electronic,
a computer, a cell phone.

And nothing is there.

As soon as one of the guys gets to
the refrigerator, he just goes. . .

He goes, "What the fuck?"

You know? He was just pissed.
They obviously knew l knew they were coming.

So they were not happy.

l was arrested and l was in court
and l thought l was going home that day

and then this federal prosecutor
tells the judge

that we not only have to
hold Mr Mitnick without bail,

but we have to make sure
he can't get to a telephone.

l was like really paying attention at this point.

Then the prosecutor
starts telling the judge

that if we let Mr Mitnick near a telephone,
he can dial up to NORAD,

dial up the modem, whistle into the phone

and launch an lCBM.

Facing 400 years in prison,
l had nothing to lose.

l ended up being held in federal prison,
without bail,

in solitary confinement for a year.

WERNER: After his time in solitary,

Mitnick languished four more years
in federal prison.

Because the internet was designed
for a community that trusted each other. . .

. .it didn't have a lot of protections in it.

Uh, we didn't worry about
spying on each other, for example.

We didn't worry about somebody
sending out spam

or bad emails or viruses.

Uh, because such a person would have been,
you know, banned from the community.

lt would be really nice,
when l got a message,

if l knew where the message came from,

but the way that the protocols
of the internet work,

that's fundamentally impossible.

And so l kind of have to
look at the message and guess.

ls this somebody
pretending to be somebody else?

We can design systems
that are really anonymous

or that are utterly identifiable,
down to the person.

lt's time for us to think about in what contexts
we'd want to support what.

A system that is utterly identifiable
at all times is a nightmare.

lt's exactly what we don't want to hand a country
that doesn't embrace the rule of law.

Ready-made for them to. . .
to employ with their populous.

At the same time, a system that. . .

can provide no accountability, at all?

We have pockets of that online and most
people do not find that appealing.

ln any frontier, before the law gets there,

there's always people seeking to take advantage
of the system.

l've seen, in the United States, for instance,

probably something like
five or six billion identities lost.

There aren't that many people
in the United States,

which makes everyone a little inured to it.

What does it really mean, when they hear
their identify has been compromised?

lt's not always
an identity-compromising totality.

Sometimes, it's just a small portion.
Your identity comprises many, many things.

There is one you and there are many
components that represent you digitally.

Some compromises in that system have
very little impact on you and some huge.

But the line between. . .

your physical life and your digital life
is becoming far more blurred.

And there will come a point,
where the threats online

will hamper your ability
to embrace new technology.

That's what my colleagues
and l have to push back.

Governments who can achieve
all the same effects they would

for international affairs or foreign affairs,

without having to rely on tools of war.

lt's another tool at. . .at the table.
Right?

War is an extension of politics by other means.

Well, now there is another one,
with much less risk, easier to fund,

and it puts even some smaller nation states
on the same playing field as larger ones.

So, dozens of nation states
have an ability to hack others

and they use this
as an extension of foreign policy.

WERNER: We became curious to look into

the biggest cyber attack known until today.

You were at the Sandia National Laboratories.

What sort of a company is Sandia?

- Can you explain?
- Sure.

Sandia National Laboratories
is a government research laboratory,

um, a Department of Energy
research laboratory, that. . .

that does work in the national interest.

Weapons work.

There's solar-energy research.

Micro-machine research.

Cyber-security research.

Those sorts of endeavours.

Nuclear weapons?

Nuclear weapons, yep.

lt's part of the nuclear-weapons complex
for stockpile stewardship,

along with some of the other laboratories,
just to ensure that

the weapons will function properly

and, uh. . . as they age through the years.

So a wonderful target for cyber attacks.

- lt is.
- lt can't get any better.

lt's. . . lt's uh. . .
lt has a big target on it, yes.

You stumbled over a problem?

A problem, yes.

Terrifying in scope, basically, you know,

hundreds of organisations. . .
a military defence industrial base,

uh, compromised,
as far as their networks.

And um. . .

You know, just people maintaining
a presence on the network

for the sole purpose of siphoning off
information of value.

But we know the World Bank was affected.

- NASA was affected.
- Mm-hm.

Military was affected?

That's correct.

l just cannot talk about it. l'm sorry.

(Laughs nervously)

All right, but. . .

we do know a name.

We do have a beautiful name.

- Titan Rain.
- Mm-hm.

- Can you at least nod?
- Yes.

WERNER: The scope of our conversation
was extremely reduced,

but some of the information here
became part of court proceedings.

The transcripts are public record,
including the name coined by the FBl.

lf you were not up at night in the office,
you were up at night at home?

Up at night at home, yes.

Lots of coffee?

Uh, lots of coffee.

Lots of Nicorette.

And how rewarding is it
to trail the enemy?

To find the track?

lt's. . . lt's very rewarding.

lt's like a puzzle, finding patterns
within chaos that shouldn't be there.

And finding these anomalies
and once you scratch the surface,

you start to put together clues and. . .
and develop a better picture.

You can be certain that you're pursuing
a certain person or a certain entity

and it could just be a ghost.

Until you have some physical proof,

you have someone that kicks a door down

and sees that this is the person
that's actually behind the keyboard,

it can all be a myth or an illusion.

lt could be, you know,
a layered sort of thing or all at once.

You know, just bring down power,
financial systems,

just degrade, corrupt them.

Sometimes, it's even worse.

Rather than bringing it down, you corrupt it

and undermine faith, let's say,
in the stock market.

Don't bring it down.
You start altering prices.

You start altering records, so. . .
and you delete them in mass

and just cause chaos, so the markets
cannot even restore and come up for days.

There's the possibilities
of taking over space craft

and lowering the orbits of the space craft,
so they burn up,

and vital GPS communications
and other sorts of communications are. . .

There's nothing there
to replace them any more.

Could it be that we are, right now,

already in a cyber war
that we don't even notice?

Sure.

KEvlN MlTNlCK: lt doesn't matter how much
money a company invests in technology.

You could spend tens of thousands
of dollars on your firewall,

on your intrusion-prevention systems,
on your spam,

on your anti virus. . .

and if l could just manipulate one person
inside that company, l'm in.

95% of the work, when l used to do this
in the past, is research

and finding out about the human element

and gathering information and emails
and their personal emails

and the conference that they were just at
and who spoke before them

and that person's email address, so l can
send that person a rigged PDF attachment,

that may look perfectly normal and forge it.

Because l just spoke with this guy,
so l'm gonna open it.

And nothing happens on my computer.

But in the background, a little Trojan
is dropped that starts communicating,

that allows me access and then l,
you know, gather more information.

l grab his contact book.

l find the people that know

the information
that l'm interested in exploiting.

And then l send an email from him,
with the same type of attachment,

and, eventually, l have. . .
you know, what l want.

People are the weakest link in security.

People - not the technology.

TV: Now through this special TV offer,
you can receive a Motorola flip phone,

with Cellular One service
for just pennies a day.

Now everyone can enjoy the freedom
of a personal cellular phone.

- (Phone rings)
- You can make a call anywhere.

- Or get a call any time.
- Oh, hi.

(Chuckles)
So, l'm living in Denver, Colorado.

l'm not living under
the name of "Kevin Mitnick".

l'm under the name of "Eric Weiss".

Why Eric Weiss?

Because, at the time, l was a federal fugitive.

l was hiding from the FBl.

And my idol was Harry Houdini
and that's Harry Houdini's real name.

So l thought l had a sense of humour.

So l called Directory Assistance,
l get the number to Motorola.

l'm now talking to the vice President

for Research and Development
for all of Motorola Mobility.

l go, "Hey, this is Rick
over at Arlington Heights."

l found out they had
an Arlington Heights facility.

"l'm looking for the project manager
of the MicroTAC."

And the vP goes,
"Oh, that's Pam. She works for me.

- Would you like her extension?"
- l go, "Sure. Give it to me." He does.

So my next call is to Pam,

but l don't get her, l get her
outgoing greeting on her voicemail.

She told her callers that she'd just left
on a two-week vacation,

the date she's returning.

"lf you need any help whatsoever, please
call Alicia on extension blah blah blah."

So, of course, my next call is to Alicia.
She answers the phone and l go,

"Hey, Alicia, this is Rick
over at Arlington Heights.

Did Pam leave on vacation yet?"

Of course l already knew she had.
And she goes, "Yes."

l go, "Well, before she left,
she said that you could help me get a copy

of the MicroTAC source code.
She said you would help me out."

About five minutes later, she goes,
"Oh, l found the source code."

She gave me the release number
and she goes, "But there's a problem."

And she goes, "Rick, l'm gonna
have to talk to my security manager

about what you're asking me to do.
l'll be right back."

l go, "No, wait, wait." l didn't want her
to talk to any security manager.

Cos they'd figure out what's going on.

About eight minutes later,
she comes back on the line.

l'm thinking they've hooked up
a tape recorder

and that's gonna be Exhibit A
in a court case later.

And she goes, "Rick. . ."
l go, "Uh-huh?"

And she goes, "That lP address
you gave me to do the file transfer

is not inside Motorola's campus, it's outside.

Because of that, l can't transfer the file.

We need to use a special proxy server
to do so and l don't have an account."

l go, "Uh-huh." l just go, "All right,
you know, thank you very much."

And she goes, "Wait, wait. l have some
great news for you." l go, "What?"

She goes, "My security manager

gave me his personal username
and password,

so l could log on to the proxy server
to send you the file."

You know, Motorola had a bunch of
security, technical security,

but it only took me 1 5 minutes,
with a good gift of the gab,

to get those crown jewels,
so that's how that worked.

But you didn't sell it?

- No.
- lt was curiosity?

- lt was sport? lt was exciting?
- A trophy.

This is Taurus, the concept that has evolved

from the work of these teams
of scientists and engineers.

They believe the huge space colony
could be built before the year 2000.

Constructed almost entirely
from ore mined on the moon,

the Taurus colony would become home
for 1 0,000 people.

WERNER: ldeas of creating colonies
outside of planet earth

have been around for a long time.

The problem of water, air and shelter
looks already solved.

ln fact, nothing looks inviting out there.

There is a private company, SpaceX,

which is pursuing this idea
in practical terms.

Here, rockets are being assembled
for the transport.

The founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk,
is not just a dreamer.

He made his fortune with PayPal,

he's building Tesla electric cars

and is now constructing the largest
factory for batteries on this planet.

After set-backs,
he's now successfully launching rockets.

(Rumbling)

For the first time in the history of
earth, in four and a half billion years,

the window of possibility is open
for us to extend life to another planet.

To the best of our knowledge,
life exists only on earth.

There is a good argument that it exists
elsewhere, but we've seen no sign of it.

l think it's important for us to take advantage
of that window while it is open

and to establish life on another planet
in the solar system,

just in case something goes wrong with. . .
with earth.

Uh. . .

And, uh, you know, there could be
either a natural or a man-made disaster,

that knocks the technology level

below that which is. . .where it is possible
to travel to another planet.

The key to establishing a self-sustained
large civilisation is getting

the cost per unit mass low enough
that there's an intersection of sets.

The set of people
that wish to move to Mars

and the set of people that can afford to
move to Mars, inclusive of government aid.

l mean, right now, we can't even get
one person to Mars. So. . .

l would come along.
l wouldn't have a problem.

- A one-way ticket.
- That sounds great.

- l'd be your candidate.
- OK.

Um. . .

l. . . l do think we'll want to. . .

. .offer round trips, because a lot
more people would be willing to go

if they think that, if they don't like it,
they can come back.

(Rumbling)

WERNER: But how would we talk to them
who chose to stay?

Who would tell them
the outcome of the World Series?

Mars is actually a comparatively easy
internet thing to establish,

at least for a local internet,
because you wouldn't have. . .

You wouldn't be living everywhere on Mars,
so you'd really just need. . .

maybe four satellites to have. . .

global coverage of. . .
to have global internet coverage,

because of how sparse
the civilisation would be on Mars.

Uh, and then some relay satellites
to get back to earth.

Uh. . . Particularly when Mars is on
the other side of the sun.

You'd need to bounce it off a relay satellite.

You couldn't communicate directly with it.

WERNER: The skyline of Chicago.

lt looks devoid of its inhabitants.

we have to assume that nearly everyone
has left for a colony out there.

ELvlS PRESLEY: ♪ Are you lonesome tonight?

♪ Do you miss me tonight?

♪ Are you sorry we drifted apart?

♪ Does your memory stray to a brighter. . .

The planetarium is the only point of contact.

Inside, a monument for those
who have levitated and left.

Yes, things must be real good out there.

♪ . .do the chairs in your parlour
seem empty and bare. . .

But then we met some stragglers
left behind.

They're all on their smartphones.

♪ . .and picture me there. . .

Have the monks stopped meditating?

Have they stopped praying?

They all seem to be tweeting.

♪ . .shall l come back again?

♪ Tell me, dear

♪ Are you lonesome tonight?

WERNER: How could we communicate
with stars out there that potentially have life?

Well, we can think of creating
a kind of long-range internet,

either through the use of radio waves
or perhaps visible light.

So, these would be the kinds of signals
that we could generate -

in the case of lower energy signals,
like radio waves - relatively cheaply.

And we could broadcast,
if we came up with a suitable code,

some way of transmitting information
over galactic and intergalactic distances.

But we would get an answer back
in 800,000 years!

Maybe. Or two and a half million years.

Well, l think that the more one looks for

planets in the universe
beyond our solar system,

that are potentially places
that might be hospitable to life,

the more you appreciate
the wonderful planet that we have here,

that allows us to do things like
swim in the ocean

and breathe the air
without the help of our technology.

And so, while l would like us
to explore Mars more,

l think the only thing
that we've demonstrated

is that we're very good
at destroying the habitability of earth,

rather than improving the habitability
of a completely alien world.

The idea that Mars will somehow save us

from the decisions we've made here
is a false one.

And it's a little like saying that you're
going to go live in a lifeboat,

when, you know, even lifeboats
need somewhere to land.

l don't think l have good dreams.

Oh, l'm sure l have good dreams sometimes

but l don't seem to remember
the good dreams.

The ones that. . .

. . l remember are the nightmares.

WERNER: The Prussian war theoretician,
Clausewitz,

in Napoleonic times, once famously said,
"Sometimes, war dreams of itself."

Could it be that the internet
starts to dream of itself?

Great question.

To think about dreaming,
there are maybe two aspects.

One is what l'll call awareness.

When you wake up and you say,
"Oh, l was just dreaming this" and you know it.

Another aspect is just the. . .

Some kind of pattern of activity then emerges,

not because of some external stimuli,
but just because of something going on.

Unpredictable patterns.

l think, already,
the internet has the second of those.

lt has unpredictable patterns all the time.

They cause things like flash crashes
on the financial markets.

So we have plenty of kind of currents
running around in the internet,

that are unpredictable.

Uh, in some cases, unstoppable.

lmaginative?

lf. . . Now it comes to,
what do we mean by "imaginative"?

But if we mean. . .
We call a person "imaginative"

if they come up with ideas
that we didn't think of and that. . .

we nevertheless admire.

lf. . .

Usually, admiration is part of it.

So, for the internet, so far,
l think it's mostly just unpredictable.

l haven't seen anything the internet did
on its own that l admire yet.

Does the internet dream of itself?

lt does, in the sense that it can beget
additional networks layered on top of it,

that have the characteristics
of the underlying internet.

So, just as the basic internet
is a series of computers

that happen to talk internet to each other,

so that you can move a bit
from here to there,

there's a fellow named
Sir Tim Berners-Lee,

who could conceive of something
called "the worldwide web"

and choose not to copyright it,
not to patent it,

to allow anybody to speak server
and some people speak client

and then, before you know it,
you've got websites.

The web is the internet dreaming of itself.

Could it be that the internet dreams of itself?

lt's a fascinating idea. ln fact, there was
a wonderful science-fiction story,

which later got turned into a movie,
Blade Runner.

l think it was called
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

The robots dream,

but the internet is nothing but connections.

Will it have its own consciousness?
Will it have its own set of rules? And. . .

Perhaps. . .in an even more scary realm,
a science-fiction realm,

will the internet, therefore,
make its own decisions?

And will the decisions about
how communication happens

go out of human hands?

That's certainly a possibility.

But since we don't even
understand consciousness,

l am hesitant to make any predictions.

And l think anyone who claims

they know what's going to happen
to the internet is not worth listening to.

WERNER: Pittsburgh.

The industrial age,
the steel mills, are long gone.

A new industry has established itself.

Here, robots are being designed.

This one named "Chimp"
is testing its limbs on its own.

Soon battalions of them,
connected via internet,

could perform rescue missions
in disaster zones.

l think it's going to run through
the lift joints momentarily.

We're still a long ways away

from a robot having a complete
understanding of the world,

of. . .of cause and effect,

of desires and hopes and dreams.

And those are the things
that still make humans human

and robots are on a much lesser scale.

Well, you could think of this scenario
almost as robot dreaming.

This is, you know, a robot conceptualising
what is gonna happen in the future

and thinking about different scenarios.

And for any of these motions,

it's considering thousands and thousands
of scenarios per second that might happen.

Um, especially when you get to the point of

robots exchanging information
with one another,

then you might have a robot dreaming
about places it hasn't even been.

This is the Chimp view of the world now,

using a high-resolution laser scanner,

and it has to really build up its. . .

its, uh, learning of what's going on
in the environment.

ln this case,
it's a valve that it's trying to turn

and we see the pre-planning.

This is like the robot imagination
of what's going to happen,

where the gripper is gonna be, how it's
gonna come in, how it can manipulate it.

WERNER: lt could have opened the valve
in Fukushima and prevented an explosion.

That was one of the key things that. . .
that spurred this research.

Realising that it was too dangerous
for humans to go in,

but if you could have had a robot go in
and just do some simple things,

straightforward things
that the humans were unable to do -

open valves to change the cooling
flow patterns, maybe turn on pumps again -

that would have made all the difference

in preventing the hydrogen build-up
and the subsequent explosion.

How valuable is the cockroach for you?

Uh, l think. . . l think any insect
is amazingly, uh, advanced

compared to the state-of-the-art robots
right now.

lf you think about a cockroach,
the fact that it can scurry around on the floor,

it can avoid dangers,
it can find food for itself, it can reproduce

and it can live for. . .

uh, for several years on its own.

Robots are nowhere near that point yet
and, uh, l think it will be great

when we have even as much capability
as a cockroach.

l cannot only imagine
artificial intelligence

evolving spontaneously on the internet,

but l can't tell you that it hasn't
happened already.

Uh, because. . .

. .it wouldn't necessarily reveal itself to us.

l think that the biggest risk is not that
the Al world develop a will of its own,

but rather that it will follow the will of
people that establish its utility function

or its optimisation function.

And that optimisation function, if it is. . .

. .uh, not well thought out,
l mean, even if it's relatively. . .

lf its intent is benign, it could have
quite a bad. . .quite a bad outcome.

For example, if you were. . .
a hedge fund or a private equity fund

and you said, "Well, all l want my Al to do
is maximise the value of my portfolio."

Then. . .the Al could decide,
"Well, the best way to do that is to. . .

short consumer stocks,
go long defence stocks and start a war."

Uh, and that would obviously be quite bad.

WERNER: Such an attack
would be much more prosaic

than an invasion of these aliens
in the SpaceX reception area.

l think we're gonna get to the point
where almost everything we do

will be done by machines.

And we'll still need people,
but, l mean, if you ask the question about

will there ever be an artificial
intelligent machine that makes movies?

Absolutely yes.
Will it be quite as good as yours?

- No-one can even come close.
- Of course not!

- (Werner laughs)
- But. . . Actually, l think. . .

almost everything we do,
we'll find machines doing it better.

And the reason why that's the case

is because machines learn faster
than people can learn.

But they cannot fall in love, as we can.

And will it be useful for machines
to fall in love?

Will we want to have machines
that are just like people? l would say no.

Honestly, if my dishwasher
came to me and said,

"Look, l've fallen in love
with the refrigerator

and, as a result,
l have no time to wash your dishes",

l wouldn't like that dishwasher.

We're going to have a revolution not only
in our technology, but in our theology.

We don't even have a name for it,
but it's around the internet.

lt's around connectivity.
lt's around building machines that think for us.

And l think we're due
for another shift in our morals,

in our. . .in our definition
of what it means to be human.

We're right just at the beginning of that.

And so you can see us trying to kind of. . .
feel out and invent this new society

and invent these new ideas
of what's right and wrong.

What can we depend on each other for?
Or what can we expect from each other?

How much do we want to do that?

Uh. . . So, l think it's an incredibly
creative time in human history,

not just technologically, uh. . .
but also morally and culturally.

This room. . . This room should know l'm here.
l should be able to talk to it.

lt should be able
to give me an answer, verbally.

l should ask, "Where," for example,
"is a high-speed printer?

Where did l leave my keys?
Where is a book on this subject?"

lt should answer me,
with speech, with a hologram,

with a display, in a very natural way.

l should maybe use gestures and touch

and even smell and all my senses
to interact in a very humanistic way

with this technology around us.

And once that technology comes out
into our physical world. . .

. .and becomes embedded in our walls,
in our desk, in our bodies,

in our fingernails, in our cars,
in our offices, in our homes,

it should disappear

and become invisible.

Whereas electricity. . .

there's a socket in the wall,
you plug in, you get electricity.

You don't care how it's made.
lt's not a complicated interface.

lts invisible.

The internet is yet to evolve to that goal
l was hoping for, of being invisible.

What's interesting is what you're gonna
build on top of it for you and for me.

l call it "the internet of me". lt is a world
where when you walk into a room,

the lights dim to your preference level,
you may have music that starts up.

lt may even have complex protocols

for how to interact with
somebody else's internet of me.

That's interesting and the world
that will emerge as a result,

eventually, won't even need phones.

The environment will be so wired,
that your experience will be brought to you.

Your calls will be brought to you,
your advertising, your content.

Your work. All of it will come with you.
That's an internet of me.

lt is going to take a leap of thought,
a leap of. . .courage, societally,

for us to accept a generation
that's always had an egotistical world.

We tell children very often, "You have
to play with others, you have to share,

your world view isn't unique,"

but when the world, the objects in it,
start to tell them that they are,

they're different, that's egotistical,
but it will also be a magical world.

One where a wave of the hand creates doors
moving and objects changing position.

But imagine a generation
that's never known anything else but that.

l deeply regret the fact
that deep critical thinking. . .

and imaginative thinking,
that creative thinking, is lost.

ln my opinion, computers
and, in some sense, the internet,

are the worst enemy
of deep, critical thinking.

Youth of today are using machines
to basically replace

their examination
of the things they're observing.

They don't understand what they're looking at
or hearing or what they're learning.

They depend upon the internet
to tell them and decipher it.

They look at numbers, instead of ideas.

They fail to understand concepts
and this is a problem.

My hope would be there. . .
are still going to be. . .

. .that the appeal of
deep immersion in something,

that through the school system
we still subject our kids to,

we can really try
to turn them on to its charms,

so they become intrinsically
self-motivated to pursue it.

Whether we use science
or ancient Greek or philosophy,

it's those tools that are important.

Those are the things that people
are gonna be able to use in the future.

The actual information they learn
in school won't be important.

lt'll be dwarfed by the information

that's coming out on the internet
every single day.

Historians, l think,
will also see an interesting thing.

They'll probably call the time around now
the Digital Dark Age.

lt will be very mysterious,

because a lot of things happened quickly,
but the records will all be lost.

We don't have the handwritten letters,
like we have from,

you know, the founders of the Constitution,

the Founding Fathers.

We have their letters with each other.

We can see the sort of
background conversation

in creating the United States government.

We don't have the equivalent
for the background conversation

in creating the internet,
because it was all done on email.

There's a playful project called
the Wikipedia Emergency Project,

that if there's ever going to be,
possibly, a world-changing event -

a big volcanic eruption -

Wikipedia volunteers are supposed to
start printing out Wikipedia pages madly

and storing the paper in places
that their heirs can find it later.

What this scanner measures. . .
lt's an MRl scanner

and it measures magnetic resonance energy
that's emanating from the brain.

So it's really extra-sensory.

lt's precise enough to tell us
what activity is occurring

in each little volume element
the size of a peppercorn.

When you read a sentence that says,

"There are two elephants
walking across the savanna,"

a computer program can tell that the same
thought is going on in your brain,

whether you're watching the video
or reading the sentence.

At a conceptual level, it's the same.

lt's also the same for people
across languages.

There's a universality of
the alphabet of human thoughts

and it applies to the videos that Jack Gallant
and his colleagues have found,

but it also applies to spoken
and written speech.

So. . . And. . . And it crosses languages.

We have a vocabulary.

The brain has a vocabulary
and we're beginning to discover it.

Right now, we need this $2 million machine
that weighs 1 6,000lb,

but if you ask, in the future,

will some genius biophysicist invent
a little cap or helmet that will do it,

l think that that's. . .that that's likely.

The energy, the electromagnetic energy,
is just sitting there, it's sitting there.

So, you know,
when you talk about telepathy. . .

Telepathy is. . .communication
across a distance.

Well, we can already go a few millimetres

and, you know, it's just a matter of time
before we can go thousands of miles.

You could, essentially,
in the not-too-distant future, tweet thoughts.

So not type your little tweet, but think it,

press a button and all your followers
could potentially read it.

Could you detect that this woman
who is passing by and spots you

is just about to fall in love with you?

Now, that would be an innovation.
That would be the. . .

the killer application,
l guess you would say.

Well, l try not to make predictions
about anything less than

two trillion years from now,
for good reasons.

One is that no-one will be able
to know if l'm wrong.

But one of the wonderful things
about the future

is you don't know where it's gonna go

and the internet is,

like most results in science, out of control.

lf you think about predictions
about the future as done in the past,

they always miss the important stuff.

ln fact, most science fiction missed

the most important thing about the present
world, which is the internet itself.

They had flying cars.
They had rocket ships.

None of that exists,
but the internet governs our lives today.

lt used to be,
that when you communicated with someone,

the person you were communicating with
was as important as the information.

Now, on the internet,
the person is unimportant.

lt was developed, so that scientists
could communicate, scientists like me,

could communicate with each other,

without knowing where the other person was
or even who the other person was.

There's a famous cartoon
from The New Yorker,

which says, "On the internet,
no-one knows if you're a dog."

ln the future, you won't know

if you're communicating with dogs
or robots or people.

And it won't matter,
but becoming your own filter

will be the challenge of the future.

The filter isn't provided with you.
There's no controls on the internet.

No matter what governments do,
no matter what industries do. . .

. .the internet is gonna propagate. . .
out of control

and people will have to be
their own controls.

l think, in the future, one next step
from computation to communication

will be to sensing and remote sensing.

And mindreading via the internet?

One of those sensors
will be brain-imaging sensors.

And you will transmit thoughts?

- Right.
- The two of you.

Will our children's children's children
need the companionship of humans?

Or will they have evolved in a world
where that's not important?

lt sounds awful, doesn't it?

But maybe it'll be fine.

Maybe the companionship of robots,

maybe the companionship of
an intelligent internet will be sufficient.

Who am l to say?

♪ Salty Dog

♪ l'm standing on the corner
with a shovel in my hand

♪ l'm looking for a woman
want a working man

♪ Let me be your salty dog

♪ Oh, let me be your salty dog

♪ Or l won't be your man at all

♪ Let me be your salty dog

♪ Or l won't be your man at all

♪ Honey, let me be your salty dog

♪ Well, let me be your salty dog

♪ Or l won't be your man at all

♪ Honey, let me be your salty dog

l wanted to do some pickin', cos l like that.

(Applause)