In the futuristic world of “Her,” tech is designed to be invisible

Marketplace Tech

American Public Media

Technology, News

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The 2013 movie “Her” depicts a near future world where a lonely divorcee, played by Joaquin Phoenix, falls in love with an artificially intelligent operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson. This month we’re taking a closer look at the Spike Jonze film and how it resonates 10 years later as we find ourselves in a real life AI boom. Production designer KK Barrett walks Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about how he imagined the world of “Her” as almost a counterpoint to the science fiction dystopias we’re used to.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Marketplace Morning reports new Skin in the Game series explores what we can learn about
0:04.6	money and careers from the $300 billion video game industry. Plus, here how an Oakland-based
0:11.0	program helps young people get the skills they need to break into this booming industry.
0:15.9	Listen to Skin in the Game and more from the Marketplace Morning report wherever you get your
0:20.7	podcasts. Ten years ago, the movie Her predicted a future of super intelligent chatbots. Sounds
0:29.7	familiar. From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty-Karino.
0:34.9	The 2013 movie Her depicts a near future world where a lonely divorcee, played by Joaquin Phoenix,
0:52.4	falls in love with an artificially intelligent operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
0:59.5	Hello, I'm here. Hi. Hi, I'm Samantha. This month we're taking a closer look at the Spike
1:08.0	Jones film and how it resonates 10 years later as we find ourselves in a real-life AI boom.
1:15.2	Today, production designer KK Barrett on how he imagined the world of her as almost a counterpoint
1:22.6	to the science fiction dystopias we're used to. I think what we often see is technology
1:28.4	forward. Let's say it was 20 years in the future. We'd see technology from 10 years in the
1:33.2	future already falling apart and being replaced by something else. And there's usually a cycle of
1:37.5	replacement. And none of that was really necessary. And rather than try to make things tech,
1:43.9	we wanted to detect things. Yeah, it's interesting because kind of the heart of the movie is essentially
1:51.0	a piece of technology. But you've said in the past that you and Spike Jones really didn't want
1:56.8	this to be a movie about technology. Why is that? Because technology gets in the way of humanity.
2:04.5	I think that when the futurists think of another time and what we will have, they always think of
2:10.4	devices and rather than connections. And I think it's completely backwards. So one of the first
2:16.4	things we see is it's like it's not about technology. If it's about technology, we're going to be
2:20.0	paying attention to the technology. Let's erase the technology and go back to the humanity. The
	...

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