Last week I assigned the movie Her to my one credit class titled "Coding Culture." Below is a list of questions I fielded to the class after we had seen it:
- Can humans fall in love with machines?
- Do people in the future have technology fetishes?
- Does Samantha pass the Turing test?
- What is the technological aesthetic of the future?
- What is the significance of beautifulHandWrittenLetters.com
- In what sense is Theodore playing the same role as the sex surrogate?
- Is Theodore mediating love between humans?
- True of False: Is Theodore packaging up love in the same way as the company that produced Samantha?
- How much do we want our love packaged?
- Is Samantha is able to transcend the limits of the embodied self?
- What technology is naturalized in the movie that has not yet become naturalized today?
- How do humans in Her treat their mobile devices?
- What is the primary interface? Visual or auditory?
- Why can’t Samantha continue to love Theodore?
- Would Theodore have been satisfied being one person in a harem of many?
- Did you notice where it was filmed?
- How far into the future is the movie depicting?
- Is this love 2.0?
- Is Samantha an embodied presence?
- Does Samanatha have any bugs?
- Should Theodore have been able to get a full refund after Samantha leaves him?
- How does Samantha compare to Theodore ex?
- What does Siri think of Her?
- Is Theodore better by the end of the film?
- Is this a dystopian or utopian view of the future?
- Is machine love something to be hopeful for?
- Would machine love enhance or diminish us? Is it better than anti-depressants? How do they differ from depressants?
- What is the difference between a human and a machine?
- Why does Samantha pause when she talks to Theodore? Does this make her less or more authentic?
- Can people only love if they experience other people’s limitations?
- True or false? "The robot, which at first seems only to be something one chooses because its 'better than nothing' becomes instead 'better than anything.' "
- Do you sympathize more with Theodore’s ex or with his long-time woman friend?
- Is Sherry Turckle's title of her book (Alone Together Why we expect more from technology and less from each other) a fitting description of what is happening in Her?
- What kind of love depends on our partner being an embodied presence?
- Does Samantha feel? Or is it just performance? What is the significance of her pausing? Does she need to pause?
- Do computers need to be embodied to be truly human?
- How much of a connection can we have with someone else if we don’t have similar limitations?
- What would it do to our own lives to have Samantha as a companion? Would it diminish or enhance our lives?
- What are Sherry Turkle’s objections to robots?
- Could robots cure loneliness?
- Is it fair to think of Samantha purely as a girl friend surrogate?
- Compare Her to AI to Lars The Real Girl. How are robots represented in each film?
- Can we form attachments to non-humans?
