Being a prophet isn’t easy, especially when your prophecies are at least two decades ahead of the curve — and also, you suck. Arguably the first true ‘bad boy of tech’ (a viscerally uncool term, applied here with the utmost intention), Josh Harris would like to be known as a performance artist, but he’s more of a demented psychic. In the late ‘90s, the early-internet entrepreneur was predominantly known for his live video webcasting site Pseudo.com, as well as comically ostentatious artist parties, the opulence of which would put Kendall Roy to shame. Eager to outdo himself, Harris constructed a fake hotel in a three-story loft in Manhattan, NY, outfitting the space with 110 motion-tracked surveillance cameras and individual monitors where his voluntary ‘residents’ could watch each other on separate channels, all while being watched themselves. Food and housing were complimentary, the catch being that every single moment of your life, from eating to sleeping to going to the bathroom to having sex, was caught on camera. “Everything is free,” Harris says cheekily in an interview about the experiment, “except your image. That we own.”
The Orwellian, “neo-Fascistic” (Harris’s own words) experiment, titled “We Live in Public,” is the main topic of Ondi Timoner’s entertaining and wildly perturbing documentary on her subject’s life and career. Like Harris, her 2009 documentary is a product of its time. Timoner’s low-resolution, early digital cinematography resembles the flashy, skateboard and music video aesthetic that pervaded much of the late ‘90s to early 2000s-era MTV. Conversely to expectations, though, the film’s dated appearance is likely its strongest attribute, since grounding its cogent observations so squarely in the past only makes them reflect more strongly in the present. Remember The Social Dilemma, that popular Netflix documentary from 2020 that caused a bunch of people to post on Facebook about how they were taking a temporary “social media break?” We Live in Public was provoking the same questions, as well as ones about ego, gratification, and the nature of public persona, over a decade prior.
Despite its impressive scope, Timoner’s film opens on an unexpectedly personal note. Harris speaks directly to the camera in a pre-recorded message to his mother, whom he’s just learned is on her deathbed. Harris’s mom would like him to visit, but the son, deep in the midst of a self-imposed exile, has elected to send his last message over tape. “First of all, let me say that I love you,” Harris begins coldly, “I always have. I feel no angst, anger, um, or anything of the kind toward you. Our relationship has been sort of an odd one as they go… speaking to you virtually is how I know how to do this best. I’m sending you out in style. I mean, this is haut couture, and now, this is what art is now.” The camera zooms out, revealing that this entire message has been posted to a video streaming site. Whilst shocking, it is hardly the first time that Harris has made a painful part of his life available for public consumption, in his seemingly lifetime pursuit to realize a rather dystopian vision of human behavior held captive in an ever-evolving digital sphere. Later, somewhat edgily, he says: “Years ago, lions and tigers were kings of the jungle, and one day they wound up in zoos. I suspect we’re on the same track.”
The brisk, 88-minute documentary principally covers two experiments: one, the fake hotel, named “Quiet,” and two, a follow-up test where he turned the camera on himself and then-girlfriend, Tanya Corrin. Timoner breezes, perhaps too quickly, through this first segment, which feels like an NSFW version of The Real World. Choppy editing prevents us from fully comprehending the geography of the space, or from getting a sense of the complete duration each of Harris’s volunteers spent in such a vastly overstimulating environment. That said, it’s fascinating to watch unfold, especially as it becomes apparent how sinister some aspects of Harris’s vision are. Aside from 24/7 surveillance, there’s also a fully functioning interrogation room, in which residents must submit themselves to invasive lines of questioning that delve deeply into their personal lives and struggles. Occupants strip for Harris’s omniscient camera on command, any sense of personal dignity having long since been abandoned. The sounds of gunfire linger pervasively in the distance (there’s a full arsenal of weapons and a shooting range on the building’s bottom level). This does and should feel absurd, as well as illegal, but his participants seem in harmony with the intrusive experience. Interviewees, many of whom artists themselves, espouse a sense of freedom that came from the breakdown of social barriers, even as the cognitive dissonance that comes with constant surveillance eventually desensitized them from the basics of human interaction. The problem becomes: how can you truly get to know someone if they’re always acting for the camera?
Things only get stranger from here. Harris and former “Quiet” participant Tanya Corrin eventually became a couple, soon electing to turn their life into a Sims-style livestreamed show for the internet. Streaming alongside an active chatroom, Corrin and Harris willfully broadcasted their love life, as well as domestic disputes, on motion-tracked cameras from every angle. This is where the film more or less becomes a character study of its egocentric subject’s own insecurities, developing into an unflattering portrait of a man so intent on controlling his and others’ lives that he can’t possibly comprehend the notion of sharing agency with someone else. He’s both a pioneer and a victim of his own prophecy – like many tech giants, an expert in understanding human behavior who had immense difficulty relating to others himself. Timoner’s portrait isn’t empathetic, but she never judges him either. As the dot-com bubble crashed at the start of the new millennium, former millionaires like Harris were left washed-up and broke. It’s akin to observing an eager lab rat who’s constructed his own maze, only now unable to find the exit. Within these conditions, it’s hard not to eventually go insane.
Occasionally crude and heavy-handed in its execution, We Live in Public isn’t the best-made documentary from a technical perspective, but it has a lightning-in-a-bottle quality that’s hard to describe. Perhaps it’s that, in 2009, a film and its subject were so trenchantly able to observe the future of online human interaction, that to watch the piece now feels like staring into the past and looking into the future all at once. Harris predicted an imminent future in which people would carry out the majority of their lives within little boxes, the same shape that now forms the majority of your Instagram feed or the basic shape of a Facebook post. What’s more, the ownership over the images we post is only dubiously in our control, since that information is routinely sold and used to create targeted advertising campaigns or, worse, influence our social and political opinions. It’s a cinematic mirror, both an indictment and a casual ode to the progression of technology as an increasingly inseparable element of our day-to-day existence. To an extent, we all live in public, and seethe as we might at Harris’s impersonal manipulation of human nature, it’s not like we wouldn’t wait with bated breath to hear what he predicts next.
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