Her (2013)

The other pronoun named thread got me thinking about this movie with Joaquin Phoenix. It'll mean more to those who have seen it .. actually I'm not going to even explain the premise.

For those who have, basically what I started thinking about is the possibility that people can be dumbed down to the point of "having" less emotion than machines, and that a sophisticated program CAN in fact be a better experience for people than a person. I mean programmed correctly, an OS can also cut you all kinds of slack and have higher emotional intelligence and knows how your baggage can be dealt with. You can talk to it at any time, it could in part serve as a therapist. (think Eliza - level of sophistication is not the point)

So it takes us back to the Turing test. And actually, come to think of it - it would be far, FAR easier for a machine to imitate a gung-ho rebooter than an emotionally nuanced romantic partner. It kind of reminds me of the House of Pong in Neuromancer. Hey, the idea of a holy joystick is a bit like the dick fixation reflected in some posts some times.

So are we really that far off from this? It could effectively be a kind of psych-emotional porn, the content of which can be completely wholesome and some people might swear they are chatting with a real person. Of course here it's not about whether you're chatting with a real woman or if a person is who they say they are, they're not a person in the first place - for the simple reason that the simulation is more of a person than they are, because over time and given societal norms, most have actually forgotten what that means and had it conditioned out of them.

But there may still be people rebooting - for whatever that will mean.

 

It's from the video game ... and apparently an Asian fusion restaurant somewhere too. But here: