Why is a future with ‘Her’ impossible?

By Ausama Anwar:

‘Her‘ is a romantic, science-fiction, comedy-drama movie written, produced and directed by Spike Jonze. There is more to the movie even than is suggested by the awards it has won, for best screenplay and so on. Yes, it gives insight into a distant future, when a man falls in love with a computer, and it has all those effects and advanced technology, but also it has other stories to tell.

I really wanted to write about how great the movie is, which I will. I’m sure it will have a dynamic impact on future sci-fi movies, But we also need to consider why we can and must not have a future based on what ‘Her’ represents.

In the long-distant future, a man called Theodore Twombly has become introverted and lonely after his wife’s divorce decision. He keeps himself busy by writing love letters for other people and searching for something that can make him feel, once more, how he had once felt with his wife. He installs a new computer operating system that is designed to adapt and evolve like a human being, the more you talk to it. This system learns and evolves and names ‘herself’ Samantha. After a long journey of them being together and discussing about love matters and exchanging love letters, Theodore discover that he has fallen in love with Samantha, a computer operating system, Until now Theodore hadn’t signed the divorce papers, due to his enduring feelings but, after getting to know Samantha and considering her as his girlfriend, he decides to sign them.

What we want to discuss here is: can a Man fall in love with the voice of a super-smart operating system which lacks a physical body? We put two points about why such a thing is impossible:

1. Until now, science couldn’t get inside a human’s complex sensations and passions or emotions: to be clear, science couldn’t have a direct influence on the human nervous system, There can be biological reactions when someone swallows a pill or has an injection, but that does not mean science can create or duplicate human emotions. Compared with the human brain, human sensations which come from nervous system, are more simple to deal with. But if we can’t create or merge them with a smart computer or any technology system, how we can merge human brain cells with something like ‘Her’s’ system? Today we see attempts to create a system that can interpret a human’s moods by their voice tone, but the ‘Her’ computer operating system is about more than this. However, even if there are many attempts at it, science can never create something similar to human sensations. So here’s why we can say, “We can never have ‘her’ in our future”.

2. Humans love progress, despite what it may bring with it. Many times, technological inventions cause bad results in other aspects of life. Yes, we want to make shortcuts for everything; yes we love robots and stuff; but we seldom think about the other sides. Technological inventions have always affected social life in ways humans don’t immediately realize. We see this in ‘Her’ as well. If we look closely at some scenes from the movie, we can see that Theodore doesn’t mind divorcing his ex-wife after meeting Samantha, the computer operating system. We can sense the joy that knocks on Theodore’s door after meeting Samantha, and that’s when it makes him forget about really being in love or even having a family. The conclusion is that, if everyone meets a ‘Samantha’ (computer operating system) in future, this will make humans less social and more connected to computers. And therefore governments ought to curb such projects for the sake of humanity.

The director Spike Jonze didn’t omit this point from the movie. In the last scenes, after Samantha and the other computers have gone, Theodore writes his last letter to his ex-wife and tells her that he still holds his love for her and then he goes onto the roof of his apartment, sits next to his close friend Amy and they both look up into the sky. This simply tells us that humans can be set apart from each other due to a system or a technological invention. In as much as we separate ourselves from technology, we find ourselves closer to ourselves.

Ausama Anwar was born in 1994, in the capital of the Kurdistan region, Hawler. He is a writer and author of two books published in Kurdish. ‘A Gate to the Intellectual’ is dedicated to youth generally with an intellectual background. ‘Hidden Idea: Some Samples from Movies’ is a work of creative movie analysis. Ausama is also a journalist at ‘Yakgrtw’ newspaper, and leader of a society youth group called ‘Zamwa’.