If all the data transmitted online for only one day was burned on to CDs, the pile would stretched to Mars and back. If a directory of people on the internet – like the one that existed when it was in its nascent form – was to be published, it would be 72 miles thick. There’s a young scientist who’s trying to create a robot that’s better at football than Christiano Ronaldo or Leo Messi.

These are just a few of the things Werner Herzog fixes his critical eye upon during Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, a quizzical look into the seemingly arcane worlds of the web and tech.

Funded by cybersecurity firm NetScout, it’s expansive and ambitious, which is probably why Herzog decided to break it up into 10 chapters, each on a facet of the online and tech world. Via a coterie of charming, if sometimes awkward boffins and geeks interviewed in labs or their own garages, Herzog weaves a fantastical tale that tries to explain the online world inhabited by about 3 billion people.

There’s the birth of the internet in room 3420 in the Stanford Research Institute, a surprisingly humble origin story accompanied by swelling strings and enthusiastic narration. Then there’s new ager Ted Nelson, who isn’t content with the current web and instead wants more “interconnections”, even though it’s not really clear what he means by that.

Adrien Treuille explains how the web helped medical staff figure out a problem with their molecule modelling programme. The world of hacking is decoded by Kevin Mitnick, who ran rings round law enforcement before getting caught. Elon Musk pitches his vision of life on Mars.

Self-driving cars are unpacked by Sebastian Thurn and Raj Rajkumar, while the creator of football-playing robots, Joydeep Biswas, explains his plans to create a robot XI that could beat the World Cup winners by 2050. It’s all joyous, exciting stuff, and it argues the only real problem with the internet and technology is human beings who, unlike, say, driverless cars that share information to prevent further accidents, aren’t in the business of altruistic compassion while online.

Lo and Behold

The most sobering episode is the story of Nikki Catsouras, a teenager who drove her father’s car into a toll booth and suffered horrific head injuries. The pictures of the crash leaked online, went viral and were eventually sent to her father. The family sit in silence as the details are recounted; Herzog chooses to not even show a picture of Nikki, in case it inspired “sick curiosity”. Her mother says she believes the web is “the manifestation of the Antichrist”, and her father explains how even the dead have no privacy.

The laughs of early sections choke off into silence as the film goes on. We learn about a South Korean couple who were so addicted to the web they played video games as their child starved to death. Then there’s a man who had a leg amputated because he sat too long while online, and a group of people who live off the grid because of the invisible effects of technology.

Herzog does get a laugh when he holds back from questioning a gaming addict about her multiple online personalities, in case it triggers a relapse. Clearly pained by having to hold back, he explains that he wanted to ask about the “malevolent droid dwarf or whoever these figures are … but I desist”.

Despite some of the horror stories within, Lo and Behold is fundamentally positive about the technological world that surrounds us. Whether it’s the characters – who could walk off the pages of a Jon Ronson book – or Herzog’s deadpan delivery, it’s a homage to the outsiders who make the web and tech what it is – something ridiculous and brilliant.

Herzog is sometimes hard to follow as he pivots from sun flares to Hurricane Sandy to the Fukushima disaster without any apparent reason, but for those looking for a ride through our modern technological world, or indeed a preview of what is to come, this is it.