Her

Last week, I saw "Her", a movie directed by Spike Jones. When the end credits rolled, I decided it must have a place in my top ten favourite movies of all time. So, what's it about? Its basic premise revolves around a man named Theodore, a writer, recently separated, who is having a tough time trying to get over the failure of his marriage. He goes out and buys an Artificial Intelligent Operating System named Samantha. Throughout the movie Samantha and Theodore develop a strange yet endearing boyfriend virtual-girlfriend relationship. He eventually admits to his circle of friends that he is dating the OS. In the end, and trying not spoiling too much for anyone, Theodore resolves his differences with his ex-wife, and realizes that the love spurred between man and machine is not without its consequences.



I thought about this movie for days. I tried to piece together everything I liked about it. And in short form, here is what I came up with:
  1. The narrative story of the complex relationship between man and machine, a clever fictional depiction of our reliance on computers to carry out activities in our daily lives and then some. 
  2. The birth and growth of artificial intelligence and its interaction with common man. For Singulartarians, this is drool worthy. It's like peering into the window of the future where Apple's Siri has advanced to a point where it has a consciousness and sassy personality to boot.
  3. The cinematography; camera work, set design, color themes, and overall mood places it between an indie and mainstream Hollywood romantic comedy type of movie. It's unique.
In a nutshell, I really liked this movie because it's essentially sci-fi for the masses, it delivers the concept of the Technological Singularity into delicious, digestible bits of cotton candy for everyone to chew on. I like drawing everyone's attention to reflect on the future of artificial intelligence. This movie helps me with that cause. People watch it and enjoy the romantic 'feel goodiness' part of the movie, however what they may or may not know, is that they've also been seeded with the idea of artificial intelligence as a very likely reality coming to a future near you. And that warms my heart just a little.

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