In love with a Machine

What would you do if your only company is your computer; and if your computer has an Operation System (OP) that seems to care more about you than the humans around you? Would you fall in love with your OP’s sexy voice (Samantha)? This is the history behind the movie “Her”. The director Spike Jonze leads Joaquin Phoenix (Theodore) through a love relationship with the only “person” who interacts with him on daily basis. Theodore just finished a long relationship with his wife and they are about to sign the divorce papers. One day, he got this update for his OP and he chose a female voice for it (Scarlett Johansson). At the beginning, she helps him on his job as a love-letter writer; but as the time goes she started to interact with him even in his bed. Her voice is the first one he hears in the morning and the last one at night. He also got an earpiece to talk with her every minute of the day. In one scene, while he is at the beach, he is talking with the computer through the earpiece totally isolated to the rest of the world. One day, they have “phone” sex; after that Samantha decided to go far on her wish hiring a real woman to have intimacy with Theodore. Even thought this movie is in the near future, I think this human-machine love relationship is closer than we thought. You can see everywhere youth and adults focused on a little screen in front of them. iPods, iPads, celphone, computers are taking over our interaction with real people. It is funny, but upsetting, to see families eating at a restaurant without talking to each other because all of them are with their eyes focused on their cell phone screen. Sometimes they are also texting each other, because it is easier for them to talk through a machine than to have a real conversation. We need to learn from this movie, if we don’t want a society of isolated people, we need to stop now. We need to get out, interact, talk, spend time with our love ones, make new friends or we are going to end having a love relationship and sex with a machine.

Is Social Media Messing with your Brain?

How much time you spend on social media? And how much time you spend talking with others face-to face? Do you think social media is changing the way we interact and we fell about ourselves? David Disalvo investigates these issues in his article “Are Social Networks Messing with Your Head? The author explains that social media is changing the way people think about the internet, and also the way how we are, how we feel about ourselves and about others. Most people use the web pages and the internet to escape from their real lives, to get away from their loneliness but then ended with different problems such as self-esteem issues, narcissism and addictions; leading them to more depression and anxiety. People who are afraid of face-to face contact have encounter in social media the way to overcome their fears; a new way of meet people and make new friends. The biggest issue with this new tendency is that people is loosing the ability to talk to each other; to make friends talking with strangers and to solve their problems in person. The tendency between teenagers is to use the technology and the social media for everything. For them is easier to text, post or tweet their problems, their desires, their goals, their activities and their wishes than to sit down and have a nice chat with their peers. The social media is also transforming into an addiction or as Disalvo called it an “unhealthy attachment”; people are spending so many hours in Facebook, Twiter or Linkeding and many are getting in trouble because of this addiction. A Nielson Online reports that 70 millions Facebook users spend 233 millions hours on the site in April 2009. Most of these hours were spend during work-time costing to the companies 1.5 percent of total office productivity. I am guilty of checking my Facebook profile more than I should do it. I have spent plenty of hours scrolling up and down the screen. I have noticed that people use it for everything; from expressing their feelings and moods to the food and the clothing they are wearing. I think if you learn to balance your online interaction with your real life interaction, you can have the best of both worlds.