Her: A Movie about Technology
I am a tech & future optimist and this is my review of the movie Her.
When I first heard about Spike Jonze’s new movie about Joaquin Phoenix falling in love with an operating system, I was intrigued but reluctant. Hollywood generally portrays the future in a blatantly pessimistic way. Everyone wearing the same thing. Robots taking over and becoming our masters. It usually ends with humanity becoming extremely effed up in some dark and cold dystopia. Have you ever watched a movie that depicts a future that is any better than the present?
It’s hard to say whether Her is optimistic or pessimistic but it felt different than any other movie about the future that I’d ever seen. Maybe it felt a bit more attainable or realistic. Spike Jonze calls it a “slight” future and I think what he means is that instead of being set 20 years in the future, Her could just as easily depict a world of a couple years from now.
Before I go on I must direct interested readers to this fantastic Wired article about Her and its UI design. It was what eventually got me to the theater to watch Her and drag a couple of friends and fellow futurists with me.
In the above article, author Kyle Vanhemert talks at length about Her and the future it depicts as a place that looks more like the past. Less visible technology. Part of this is reinforced by the desaturated coloring of the film, similar to an Instagram filter. This in itself is quite fascinating. I feel that Instagram’s success in today’s world is almost entirely due to its vintage filters. That’s what initially drew me and, I would guess, a lot of people to the service. It wasn’t the photo sharing but the fact that I could make my photo look like an old Polaroid and then share it with friends.
Isn’t that fascinating?
Look at bands like Of Monsters of Men and Mumford & Sons. They play old, acoustic instruments and dress like they are from the 1930s and so many of us are drawn to them in 2014. And it’s the hipsters who dress like they are in Mumford & Sons that are moving to the progressive and most futuristic sections of our cities.
Even the actual devices in Her look a bit vintage. The main character Theo’s “phone” doesn’t have curved glass or a holographic display. It looks more like a tiny wooden book. The computer displays seen on desks are essentially metal picture frames with wood backing and a simple 3D user interface on the screen.
I predict that the future will see a resurgence of wood in our furniture and devices to balance out all the metal we currently have. There’s something timeless and classic about wood. The contrast against the futuristic quality of technology is very intriguing. I have dreams of opening up a small woodworking company focused on wooden styluses and desks and other furniture of the future. Stay tuned for that.
Scarlet Johansson’s portrayal of Theo’s virtual personal assistant Sam is also interesting. She has “personal” thoughts and acts nervous, curious and apprehensive just like any other human. She is not a human, however, and that weird fact becomes the basis of the story. But it’s not hard to see why so many of us would be very interested in a Siri-like character that we could actually talk to. I find myself talking to Siri as if she were human, careful not to raise my voice when she acts very, very dumb.
I’m still digesting Her and all of my thoughts about it. I need to talk to another human about it actually. My friends and I spent a few minutes outside the theater reacting to what we’d just seen but we were all quiet. We all needed time to think. Guys if you are reading this, we need to get face to face soon and talk.
One of my friends Jordan and I talked after the movie about whether or not technology is good or bad for us. But that is missing the point I believe. Technology just is what it is. It’s not bad or good. People aren’t really bad or good either but sometimes our actions tend towards one or the other. The bigger question for me is about how each of us can tends towards good more often in our lives and how we can then use technology to somehow make us better humans. Perhaps the best technology in many instances is no technology at all.
