'Lo and Behold,' Werner Herzog terrifies us about the future

It's entirely possible Werner Herzog could find philosophical wonders and dilemmas making a documentary about your shoe collection, but until then we'll have to settle for this prolific filmmaker's abiding interest in the vastness of humankind's dreams, desires and actions. His latest nonfiction foray is about no less than what's changed life as we know it these last few decades: that coursing, unseen river called the Internet. And though the German auteur claims to be a technophobe, "Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World" is just the kind of percolating, wry probe we need into this fast-moving, digitally monopolizing age. Herzog ("Grizzly Man," "Cave of Forgotten Dreams"), a natural alarmist at the same time he thrives on humanity's boldness and invention, isn't the type of explorer who starts with a pre-arranged idea. What animates "Lo and Behold" is his questioning spirit regarding the Web's journey from host-to-host communications tool devised in a UCLA lab in 1969 to the scarily inter-reliant nervous system of today. But with Herzog's initially chronological approach, there's plenty of humor in the recollections of gray-haired pioneers like Leonard Kleinrock, who mentions how the first machine-to-machine message from the refrigerator-sized computer at UCLA resulted in -- what else? -- a crash.