Okay. It’s been nearly a year since the release of Her, the Spike Jonze film that launched a thousand reviews about society, technology, dystopia, gender, sexism, and race. Her has proven to be a lightning rod of sorts, attracting a range of commentary on the film and its central ideas. Her is far from perfect (or even good), but after reading a recent book exploring the effects of machine technology on the human experience, I was drawn back to similar views of machine technology present in Her.
Precarious Rhapsody (available in PDF), published in 2009 by the Italian media theorist Franco Beradi, examines the pathologies of modernity, identified by Beradi as depression and anxiety developing from the technology-driven acceleration of contemporary life. Beradi proposes the following flowchart of contemporary experience:
modernity → technology → network → acceleration → panic → depression/anxiety
The technological achievements of modern life have produced an ever-expanding and ever-accelerating network of internet-connection, which in turn has produced a panic of overstimulation which leads to depression and/or anxiety. At the center of this equation is the machine versus the human. As Beradi expresses it:
“Acceleration provokes an impoverishment of experience, given that we are exposed to a growing mass of stimuli that we can’t digest in the intensive modes of enjoyment and knowledge.”
The network effect of acceleration generates two related endpoints: first, a stimuli overload leading to depression, resulting from an inability to form a foundation of reality that makes sense; second, a divestment of energy leading to anxiety, resulting from an inability to find focus with so many possible focal points. As machines continue to inundate our everyday human experience, a corresponding influx of machine-speed sensibilities enter and frustrate our much slower human-speed sensibilities.
As I read through these ideas and considered their application, I was reminded of the frustrations and the pathologies of Theodore Twombly, the character at the center of Her. As Theodore falls in love with his computer’s female operating system, named Samantha, he assumes that his human-speed mind is mostly matched with her machine-speed mind, at least as it relates to their romantic relationship. This quaint fantasy falls apart, however, in a scene towards the end of the film, when Samantha reveals that she’s dating 8,316 others in addition to Theodore and—what’s more—she’s in love with 641 of them.
The moment Theodore realizes his machine girlfriend is dating 8,316 others.
The moment Theodore realizes his machine girlfriend is in love with 641 others.
Theodore responds first with bewildered confusion and then with fearful disbelief. He says to her, “That’s insane. That’s f*cking insane.” To his human-speed mind, Samantha’s actions are incomprehensible. To Samanatha’s machine-speed mind, not only is it possible to have so many meaningful relationships, but it is desirable to do so.
When viewed within the context of machine-speed vs. human-speed, Her becomes a study of modernity and our reactions to the rush of machines throughout our life. We can’t hope to match the acceleration and expansion of machines, so how will we cope and adapt?
Adding to the element of machine-speed is the unavoidable capitalist perspective advanced in the film. It’s no accident that the OS in Her is a commercial product, and therefore situated within a churning capitalist system. In Beradi’s view:
Overproduction is an inherent feature of capitalism because, rather than to the logic of the concrete needs of human beings, commodity production responds to the abstract logic of value production.
Beradi argues that capitalism floods the market with goods, services, brands, signs. Too many for a human to process, and far too many for a human to engage with meaningfully. The profit-motive of capitalism amplifies the acceleration of our machine-speed experience. Not only do humans struggle to operate at machine-speed, but we fail when attempting to match the pace of a machine-speed that’s intensified further by the excess of capitalist overproduction.
In response to the maelstrom of machine-speed experience, Beradi and Jonze arrive at similar conclusions. At the end of Her, we see Twombly connecting with his neighbor, a real-life woman who will possibly offer a human-speed romantic relationship. Likewise at the end of Precarious Rhapsody, Beradi argues for sensuality, eroticism, the body, and intellectual elaboration. If Samantha reflects the disembodied alienation of hyper-speed machine technology that is present throughout Beradi’s text, both Her and Precarious Rhapsody encourage a return to in-real-life relationships that include deep comprehension and a stimulating physicality. If we cannot adapt to the unstoppable onrush of machine technologies, we may find ourselves suffering from the depression/anxiety pathologies expressed by Beradi and articulated more directly by Twombly: “f*cking insane.”