The Sadness of the Movie “Her”
I saw the movie Her a couple of weekends ago and have thought a lot about it over the last few days. While the movie has a thought-provoking plot, great acting, and was very well done, I can’t say that I loved the movie, primarily because it was really, really disturbing to me.
If you haven’t seen or heard of it, Her is about a guy named Theodore Twombly, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who is down in the dumps because he and his wife are in the midst of a divorce. While depressed, he buys a new operating system called OS1 that goes through all of his emails and other communications, learns more and more about him each day, adapts to his personality and essentially becomes his best friend. Theodore’s version of OS1 was a female named Samantha, and he eventually falls in love with her.
Google probably knows more about me than my wife does. Internet of Things companies are building gadgets that learn about our tendencies and adapt. The world around us getting smarter and smarter. But how smart is too smart? How connected to our technology should we be?
Technology should be a facilitator of, not a replacement for, our personal relationships.
I wrote a post about how Facebook is making us more social but less personal. Her takes it to the next level. I’m a technology guy and understand its power, but falling in love with an operating system is just really disturbing, sad, and gross to me. I think technology should be a facilitator of, not a replacement for, our personal relationships. Sure, this movie is fiction, but it’s not crazy to think that the world in Her can be a reality in our lifetimes.
What are your thoughts about the movie, or the general direction that technology is taking us with respect to our relationships? I’d love to hear them in the comments.
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Image courtesy of Mashable
I agree, it was very thought provoking and interesting. But I just don’t like the way the movie portrayed how technology is impacting relationships, even though it might eventually be true. I’m not comfortable with that, even as a tech guy.
Unlike you, I LOVED this movie! Definitely provoked lots of thoughts for me about technology and relationships. Got me to think about emotions and the building of a relationship (regardless of who’s in the relationship, even if it is an OS). Also made me realize that our technology is not quite there yet like in the movie but we are building up to it. There are so many out there that are meeting new people and building a relationship online (in some sense with their computer) so Spike Jonze is not too far fetch when he came up with this fictitious and crazy story. I thought it was a brilliant movie touching base on so many things that we are all living today. My fave was that little guy in the game he plays. Hilarious!