Review by paul2001sw-1

There can be few more tedious groups of people than dot-com entrepreneurs and performance artists: Josh Harris was one of the former who thought himself one of the latter; and in this documentary of his life, he reveals himself to be every bit as self-regarding as you might expect him to be. That he has a collection of groupies willing to assert his utter brilliance is even more annoying. What it seems he has done right is to predict how the internet will change the world; what he has not shown is any ability to get the timing right when it comes to taking advantage of this in a business sense, or the ability to suggest how we can shape this evolving world to make it a better place. Instead, he seems to have specialised in freak shows that might have accurately predicted some unwelcome aspects of the future and whose funding has depended on the the false confidence they might prove lucrative. The fact that Harris has himself retreated from the world of the web is telling; as is the fact that the chief executive of myspace claims never to have heard of him. Far from being the "visionary" as his friends attest, Harris comes over simply as the boy with too many toys. The documentary is lively, however, and oddly entertaining, even though one quickly comes to dislike and distrust the film-maker (a certified Harris groupie) and participants alike.