“The corridors look repulsive, but this one leads to a shrine.” - Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog utters these words in his unmistakably austere German monotone during the opening moments of Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, the documentarian’s attempt to paint a portrait of the vast, and amorphous web and its impact in our lives, while leading us down the fluorescent-lit hallways of UCLA’s Boelter Hall.

Herzog’s camera pauses at the doorway of Room 3420: the birthplace of the internet. It’s a linoleum-floored, four-walled classroom with baby food-green walls. Inside, Leonard Kleinrock, an early internet pioneer, gestures to a tall, rectangular box standing unceremoniously in the corner of the room. Inside this machine, Kleinrock notes, is where the first online message was sent. It looks like a cross between a school locker and a control panel from the Apollo 11. But as the camera moves in closer, Kleinrock opens the machine, revealing a tangle of weathered metal, wires, and fans. “It’s so ugly on the inside that it’s beautiful,” Kleinrock says grinning into the camera.

more here