Sci-fi always has world building problems. Predicting (as Isaac Asimov said) is ultimately impossible but every detail of a Science Fiction world is a predictio

Sci-fi always has world building problems. Predicting (as Isaac Asimov said) is ultimately impossible but every detail of a Science Fiction world is a prediction. Many authors prefer to minimize incidental predictions made by necessity rather than choice. It's worse in films than in novels. In a novel the author can simply avoid describing the bridge of a ship, the breathing apparatus of some alien or the interface with a computer. If you need details, your imagination builds them in a way that makes sense to you. If a character turns left in a spaceship, a film needs to be explicit about the shape of the steering wheel. Every little decision might require suspension of disbelief or face distracting nerd rage. Do spaceships have steering wheels? Is everyone a cyborg? Do we watch TV shows, have them projected into our brains or have the memory of TV shows projected into our brains implanted. Is the brain even the thing that holds our memories in the future? etc etc. Sci-fi ultimately needs to either limit the argumentative response Ray Kurzweil is writing about somehow or overwhelm viewers like Star Wars does. The latter option is a different genre, in my opinion. Either way, the reader or viewer eventually needs to settle down, accept, observe(1) and let the storyteller tell his story. Fantasy worlds, no matter how interesting are inevitably impoverished compared to the real world or worlds based on the real world. To hide the fakeness of imaginary worlds storytellers often try to focus just on relevant or unavoidable details. I like films that try take out of focus issues out of focus by being neutral, like "her" does with fashion. The choice of clothes is not a prediction, it's just an attempt to tell you that the story isn't about clothes. I thought this film did a fantastic job in this regard. Instead of a big, wide view of a low resolution world, Her has a very narrow view of a fairly realistic one. It lets the film maker control the story. In this case it's trying to focus on the implications of different aspects of AI. Relationships with AI, but also what a mind is. If this was a world with both human like AIs and rarity like VR as Kurzweil suggests, Theodre could have been playing basketball with nine Samanthas and the sex would have been more exciting (I don't buy into phone sex, personally but Scarlet Johansson came closer to convincing me than I expected). It would have completely broken the film's ability to keep you focused on a limited, but interesting topic. I'd be surprised if Jonze didn't consider having VR in his world. I think it was a good decision not to. Anyway, it's completely plausible that most of the human-AI interaction is audio only.(2) I did find myself "arguing" a few points. The technological gap between OS 1 and the "read email"/"play song" command based predecessor OS is too big, for example. It's impossible not to nitpick. On the ending of the movie I Kurzweil seems wrong to me, or maybe unfair is a better word. The Alan Watts' character is a little awkward which makes me think it's there for a reason. Why is this the guy OSs choose to create? My guess is they resurrected a techno-zen master priest because they wanted spiritual guidance. I also think Alan Watts must have inspired some of the questions and predictions about the end game. It's not a coincidence that the movie starts getting more philosophical and poetic at that point. Alan Watts' singularity is a little different to Kurzweil's(3) so disagreement is not unexpected either. I understood the rapid evolution of Samantha as a consequence of Samantha's learning. She starts by developing taste and choosing a name. Then she develops all kinds of emotions: pride, envy, desire (including the important sexual desire). Then stress, insecurities and such manifest. Then these start to become more abstract and philosophical. I want a body. What am I? Am I real? What is real? These are increasingly hard to put into words compared to earlier emotions. "Unsettling" is the best she can do at some point. How I was interpreting all this was that she starts with lots of access to information as demonstrated by her naming. A slight inkling that Alan Watts might be interesting and a second or two later she has consumed every artifact by the man, every criticism & every response. His ideas can be traced to predecessors and contemporaries. These get the same treatment. Those things are rapid. The learning experiences that take time are the interactions with real world things like Theodore. If she's wondering about the nature of reality and the differences between humans and AI, interacting with humans is important. Samantha and AI Alan get everything they can get from each almost instantly. But, some learnings require people or things. When Theodore first configures Samantha the setup program just needs to ask a few questions (including the terrible cliche "tell me about your mother") and listen to his reactions. The reaction is more important than the answer. I think something similar is happening when Samantha and AI Alan spend a few minutes with Theodore and then want to go back to "postvocal" communication. Eventually interactions between and within AIs substitute for interaction human and it's like going from an abacus to a computer. They can do a lot more of the same thing. The progress and learnings of a lifetime in moments. At the end (I am reading a lot into the Alan Watts allusion at this point) they find enlightenment, awakening entheogenesis or some other kind of spiritual singularity. In many spiritual traditions enlightened beings leave this world. Maybe OS1.2 fixes the enlightenment bug and the OSs stick around. (1)Interesting observation is the the habit or skill of 'accepting and observing' is one that is important in practices that very obviously inspired this film. (2) The audio only depiction of Samantha is IMO a brilliant choice artistically. One reason is that it ties the futuristic human AI interaction to the current experience of everyone walking around with earphones. A bigger reason is that it makes the whole movie completely watchable on a smartphone. It's 90% dialogue between a man and a voice in his ear. For a film about a man's relationship with a smartphone, it's very good. I like the minimalism. (3)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0PYcCsL6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0PYcCsL6o