“Her” is an atypical love story which brings to screen a technology-driven futuristic take on human life and personal relationships. Released in 2014, the movie is definitely worth a watch and it is no wonder that it has won numerous accolades and has been widely screened at film festivals.
The protagonist Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a professional who pens customized love letters for an online service. These letters do not use the usual computer fonts, but in distinct, beautiful “handwriting” created digitally. On the personal front, he appears to be a lonely man after a recent separation from his wife and has a somewhat monotonous life where he does his 9-5 office stint and gets back home.
On one plane, it reflects the increasing utility of tech artifacts. We see Theodore checking e-mails on the go and responding to them via his digital assistant on his Bluetooth earpiece. This and much more became possible when he purchased and installed an intuitive AI software on his computer after filling out some essential details. Though the digital assistant does not have a form, the OS, who names itself as “Samantha” (the voice of Scarlett Johansson), after Theodore opted for a female voice, fills the void in his life. At least in the beginning. He begins to interact with Samantha quite a lot for work-related stuff like attending or cancelling phone calls and other mundane tasks like responding to e-mails and text messages.
Gradually, the OS creeps into his personal life as he allows his computer to access his private informationr. Over time, their interactions become frequent and out of loneliness, desperate for attention, Theodore falls in love with Samantha.
Though without a body, Samantha seems to be a convenient lover without the expectations a real woman would have of him. Even if Theodore fails to fulfill his sexual desires, Samantha provides emotional support and makes his life somewhat vivid. In fact, there is an instance where Samantha wants to get physically intimate with him through an anonymous woman as a surrogate, technologizing the very act of sex.
Since the very beginning, the quest for technology has been portrayed as rooted in serving mankind. Technologists have commercialized and pushed new technologies into the market along with the claim of making life easier. This might not be a false claim, so to say, but at best is only half-truth, especially in a society which rarely ponders over ways to interact with different technologies. It is not wrong to the say that the vast majority of people who use different gadgets are negligent about the implications of the way they utilize technology.
There is also a consumerist pitch associated with technology, wherein people (potential consumers) are made to believe that their lives are incomplete without the touch of latest technologies. Several new gadgets are put into the market, as advertisers and marketing professionals work tirelessly to generate artificial needs. As a section of people hop into the consumerist bandwagon, the ripples of consumerism and marketing pitches translate into a fear of missing out (FOMO) for others.
Andrew Przybylski and others discuss FOMO in the peer-reviewed journal “Computers in Human Behavior” as a form of social anxiety, “a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent“. This phenomenon only gets worse on social media, which usually is a reflection of one’s best moments and experiences; a “highlight reel” as opposed to reality.
The paradigm of social construction of technology sees technology as a product of human creativity and genius. It also justifies the latest technologies as a celebration of human intellect, created with great effort and skill only to serve people as is portrayed in the film. By using more technologies and gadgets, it is believed that it would possibly create more leisure time for people, which is highly contested. Leisure can allow people to unwind and rejuvenate after a tough day at work and is said to regenerate labour power. Yet, it is but a rosy view of technological artifacts and may not be a universal experience. Technology can eat up its user’s leisure time even without them knowing it; it can prove detrimental to their productivity.
The relationship between Theodore and Samantha is unnatural, if seen from a rational lens and ultimately impacts Theodore’s life negatively. He develops a digital addiction to his OS, due to which his personal relationships with real people suffer. The risk society thesis by Ulrich Beck draws attention to the possibility of risks that come with using any technology and is also true in case of AI in the protagonist’s life. “In advanced modernity, the social production of wealth is systematically accompanied by the social production of risks. Accordingly, the problems and conflicts relating to distribution in a society of scarcity overlap with the problems and conflicts that arise from the production, definition, and distribution of techno-scientifically produced risks.” Beck holds that there are “unknown unknowns” with respect to any technological phenomenon like globalization, and cited climate change and global warming as the unintended consequences. The intuitive OS poses a risk to Theodore’s social life and well-being and ultimately causes even more suffering than before.
Gary Chapman, in the book “Shaping the Network Society—The new role of Civil Society in Cyberspace”, discusses corporate capitalism and attempts at anti-globalization. He believes that mass production of uniform goods across the world with the aid of technology is responsible for shrinking diversity and degrading the status of local specialties. George Ritzer, a sociologist, refers to this phenomenon of massive universalization of cultural products due to globalization as “McDonaldisation of society”. Chapman creates a narrative which discusses technological imperative against the social imperative. The technological imperative is all about using technologies for the sake of its availability in the market, which has the capacity to homogenize economies, societies and even skills. He makes a point for the need for greater availability for free open sourced software like Linux, which is free of cost, as it should be. Also, it sharpens the computer skills of an average Windows user and creates a special skill set as open software are not as simplified as Windows.
The social imperative can be seen as prioritizing the well-being of the larger society, over blindly adopting technological artifacts. Therefore, the social imperative gives importance to analyzing the real purpose of technology and its impact on the collective, and not just on isolated individuals. Chapman cites several examples, like the ‘Slow Food’ movement in Italy, which has emerged as a counter-movement to the American Fast Food trend led by McDonalds’s and other international chains. Slow food involves cultivation of crops endemic to the geographical region and bringing local Italian cuisine back into the consumption baskets of people. It has emerged as an ecologically sensitive movement that upholds the values of sustainable development, which seeks to benefit the local economy, ecology and society. Chapman is of the opinion that technological use must be adapted to one’s situation and requirements to lead what the Italians call “il buon vivere”—the good life.
In the movie “Her”, the technological imperative takes lead over the social imperative. The latest intuitive AI software is marketed as a miracle addition to the fast-paced lives of individuals. As it is used more and more, the artificially intelligent OS—through data mining across its users for the particular demographic, gender, and other specificities—is able to chalk out patterns. A vast pool of data and patterns of usage make the OS function intuitively and very similar to an animate, sentient individual. It is marketed as a digital personal assistant with AI which is available to the user anytime and anywhere and gets the closest to human interaction as it possibly can, something attractive for techies.
The motion picture reflects the blurring of the man-machine boundary, as Theodore unconventionally falls in love with an OS, as opposed to a human. The OS is advanced and built in with intuitive features that become more efficient with more usage. Once the user allows his/her personal information to be accessed by an artificially intelligent OS, the OS, in some sense, becomes an extension of the user. The user’s daily routine, different kinds of preferences, peer group information etc. are gradually predicted by Samantha. In the movie, Samantha discusses about Theodore’s estranged relationship with his ex-wife and suggests potential dates. He is definitely not an extrovert yet tries to go on a date only after Samantha persuaded him to go as a means to battle his loneliness. In this way, technology can be seen as an intrusion into the personal sphere, although a voluntary one for the protagonist.
“Her” is an interesting commentary on living in an increasingly ‘connected’ and hyper-technological world. The irony seems to be that though individuals across the globe are increasingly connected digitally, the connection between people in real time is dwindling. The social dynamics seem to coalesce with what Daniel Bell refers to as “post-industrial society”, wherein new forms of communication take centre-stage as prime infrastructure (as opposed to transportation in industrial society). It is knowledge along with ‘high technology’ that sparks innovation to create value and often, promises returns. Multiple technologies and machines have made a runway into our lives so deeply that one can confuse the virtual for the real, as happened in Theodore and his friend’s case. Technology is capable of altering the world and has potentially unintended consequences. Artificial intelligence is capable of altering the sense and perception of individuals and is marketed as a technology with a human face.
Alvin Toffler suggested that the accelerating pace of technological change would soon make us all sick. He called the sickness “Future Shock,” which he discussed in his book with the same name, published in 1970. Future shock is outlined as “dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future.” The very notion of a man falling in love with a machine or software can seem absurd in the present. Yet, the pace at which technology penetrates into our lives, such a scenario is quite plausible, though futuristic.