The Interplay of Humanity and Technology: Insights from 'Her'

Technology plays a major role in the daily routine of every single person on this planet; whether directly or indirectly, technology influences and, to an extent, controls the life of every human being. The constant presence of interactions between humans and technology took the evolution of technology to a whole new stratosphere; it now evolves in a worryingly fast pace. The aspect in which technology and humanity overlap and interact is communication. Because of this, the very core of both is also inter-changing.

Humans innovate to make their lives easier, faster, and more efficient, and so, technology is slowly, but steadily, catching up with what constitutes a human. While technology is still far off of capturing the very essence of humanity, there are lot of aspects that overlap between humans and their creation, with both highly influence and controlling the other.

In the movie “Her”, there was heavy influence from the real-world technologies and innovations, some were believable, and others were somewhat farfetched. The main idea of the movie, which moves the story forward, is Samantha, the operating system. This was very believable as the evolution of the virtual assistance is, most probably, going to be their ability to develop unique characters and feelings of some sort. Consequently, one can easily imagine that humans, like Theodore, will eventually develop feelings and connections to these virtual characters that have personalities, and can be adjusted to resemble and reflect their dreams and desires. Some other aspects from the real world that exist in the real world are the earpiece that Theodore uses to communicate with Samantha also exists in the real world, in the form of the Airpods.

Even the hologram video game exists in reality. On the other hand, some things were unbelievable, but they were not the innovations, but rather, it was how naïve and manifested Theodore was in his relationship with Samantha. It is not his clinginess, but that he thought that he was different than the other users Samantha was to communicate with. After all, she, or more accurately, it, was an operating system that happens to be tailored for whoever buys and uses it.

The story was about a lonely man who is having hard times adjusting to this lonely life. He works an extremely insincere job; one that basically strip humans of their core emotions. Theodore’s life is very routine-based and misses any form of belonging or intimacy. It is not until he gets an operating system that is characterized by some superficial traits a human possess that he starts developing some sort of connection. The main takeaway is that although virtual assistants exist, the movie, being a sci-fi, can influence creators and innovators to accelerate the process of incorporating personalities in their creations.

This urges anyone to think about what other sci-fi movies influenced or maybe even made people create something from the scratch. The answer is simple, yes. The most interesting incident is the concept of self-lacing shoes that was first introduced in the second installment of the movie “Back to the future”, which was first released in 1989. The shoe company that the movie had created this show could not actually have it mass-produced until 2014 (Davis, 2018). This shows just how much the human thoughts are derived from the culture, and that it does not matter what the source is, humans always find ways to get new ideas.

All in all, the movie opens one’s eyes to the extent to which technology is taking humans as well as that to which humans are taking technology and how far that might be. It shows how much humans long for genuine connection, and for that, they can get project ideas that exist nowhere but in their heads on anything that can resemble their thoughts. The movie is an insightful journey that urges the person to reflect on how real their relations and interactions are. Also, how technology affects humans in the same sense that humans can affect technology.