Alphaville is a 1965 French Science Fiction Thriller considered the grandpappy of the Cyberpunk genre. In it an agent (Lemmy Caution) of the Outer Countries is sent to the state of Alphaville to discern what has happened to other operatives sent there. He uses the cover of a journalist to do so and through his investigations discovers something most sinister. The film has a runtime of 99 minutes.
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An agent, Lemmy Caution, of the Outer Countries is sent to the state of Alphaville to discern what has happened to others who have been sent there. Initially avoiding having to report to Central Control Mr. Caution under the guise of a journalist gradually begins to learn more about the state. Every citizen has a control number and ever citizen has an assigned job or jobs with 'levels' denoting experience and skill. Their lives are dictated by Alpha 60, a marvelous supercomputer whose predictive models are taken as absolute predictions of future events around which all government and state planning is conducted around. For the sake of efficiency language is simplified into a newspeak. Those who deviate from their assigned roles and do not conform with Alpha 60s models are executed publicly in a celebrated event of cleansing which sickens Mr. Caution. When he learns that the supposed head of Alphaville's programmers is one of the agents sent by the Outer Countries he confronts him. The man denies ever having been that person. After being apprehended for this transgression Mr. Caution learns that the operatives sent to Alphaville where brainwashed, and that this is something the public of Alphaville is aware of- it's taught in school as a normal process for conducting counter intelligence. Speaking with Alpha 60 Mr. Caution realizes that it's analyzing everything he says, and thus he tells it a line of poetry. Which it begins to process. Escaping authorities the seed planted by the poem begin to bear fruit as Alpha 60 upon determining the meaning of the poem develops self awareness but at an unforeseen and horrific price. The citizens of Alphaville where so interconnected to Alpha 60 that unknown to Caution they shared the same consciousness- a collective mind- and when Alpha 60 became self aware it's 'self' began to conflict with this collective which it started to conflict with as a new individual rather than the medium of a shared consciousness causing people to wander without aim, to try to climb walls, to crawl upon the floor. The intensity of this moment is enough to cause their deaths but Caution manages to save one individual who had some level of self and the two drive off into the Outer Countries as Alphaville perishes behind them.
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Star Trek's Captain Jean-Luc Picard is named as a node to Jean-Luc Godard who wrote Alphaville. His struggle with the Borg is another nod to this science fiction writer.