Spike Jonze Her Summary

“Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind,” by Ethan Watters, is a compelling article that challenges the reader’s perception on culture and cognition. Instead of cognition affecting culture, our culture affects our cognition. It’s interesting to conceptualize, and it makes one have to introspect their culture, beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Why do we do behave the way that we do? Are our thoughts our own? How much of us is influenced by our environment? This effect of culture can be rooted in our childhoods. We are taught societal norms and how to view, categorize, and perceive the world through the lens of the environment surrounding us. A prime example of this comes from the games we played growing up.

He uses words such as “dramatized” (para.1), “purely science fiction” (para.3) and “philosophical” (para.7) to invoke the irrationality of the fear of machines such that they would agree with his view. The use of Pathos is also observed in Tufekci’s article where she gave the anecdote of the call center worker being worried of losing his job. This further contradicts her purpose as it directs her readers into relating to the feelings of the worker. Furthermore, the constant re-emphasis of points such as “workers already feel like they are powerless as it is” (para. 17) due to the fact that “technology is used to “automate” the jobs and to take power away” (para. 16) does not provide any sense of reassurance to the readers  and cause them to waiver away from her

Sherry Turkle’s article “Alone Together” analyzes the psychological effects, that technology, or as she refers, robots, have on people. She begins with the technological growth in robots as she states, “computers no longer wait for humans to project meaning onto them. Now, sociable robots meet our gaze, speak to us, and learn to recognize us” (Turkle 85). Technology is at its peak in modernization; in an instant, people are virtually transported into another dimension. Turkle wants her audience to acknowledge what qualities humans are missing when they become indulged in their machines. Robots are beginning to fill gaps of our lives that our brains are not functioned for. Humans are beginning to rely too much on robots, robots are possessing

Biocultural anthropology looks at the relationships between human biology and culture. In the movie Avatar, the Na’vi are humanoids species native to Pandora, standing 6 feet tall with blue skin and a long tail; But one of the characters, Parker Selfridge from the human world, a selfish and greedy man, refers the Na’vi as “blue monkeys” and “savages”. The Na’vi natives are very spiritual believers and they believe all living beings in Pandora lives in unity. Every living creature that is born on Pandora has “neural connection fibers.” Not only Humanoids and animals have these “neural connection fibers” but also trees which allows all breathing creatures to “plug in” to each other’s neural system network. This lets them feel each other’s thoughts and emotions. In the movie, Jake Sully, a human man, is connected to the Na’vi world by a computer-generated machine that links his mind with his avatar body which could interact with the natives of Pandora. He finds himself feeling more connected with himself in his avatar body than his actual body in the real world; For the reason that in the real world, he is paralyzed and can’t walk so he feels handicapped. In his avatar body, he could be normal again and do the things he couldn’t do in real life like run on his two feet. Also, humans didn’t know how to connect with each other’s feelings and he was able to connect and feel the spirits and emotions with the Na’vi of the Pandora world.

At work, people are claiming to be too busy on their devices to be able to have conversations. In fact, they do not want to have the face to face interaction, but would “rather just do things on [their] blackberry” (136). Moreover, a “sixteen-year-old boy who relies on texting for almost everything says wistfully, ‘Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation’” (136). The reliance on technology has increased significantly and the necessity for conversation has pivoted. A teenage boy confesses that he feels more comfortable talking to an “artificial intelligence program” (138) about dating instead of his own father. Similarly, many people want “Siri, the digital assistant on Apple’s iPhone, [to become] more advanced, [because] ‘she’ will be more and more like a best friend” (138). Robots are being given more credit for comforting humans than humans themselves. Not only are the younger generations thinking this, but also the elders. When Turkle brought a baby seal robot to a nursing home, an elder woman began to speak to it and feel comforted by it. It is a tragedy that humans are feeling a deeper connection with robots than other humans. Humans have the experiences and the feelings that the robots are not capable of having. Hence, there is confusion about the difference between conversation and

Cynthia White was found guilty of felony murder and cruelty to children in the death of her 3 year old son in 1992. Her convictions were affirmed in White v. State, 265 Ga. 392 (456 SE2d 587) (1995). She filed a “Petition for Resentencing Under the First Offenders Act” in July of 2016. She now appeals from the trial court's denial of that motion.

Culture defines humanity. Culture makes humans different than any other living organism ever known. Culture is what makes humans unique, and yet culture is easily the most misunderstood characteristic of individuals. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan develops the theme of incomplete cultural understanding leads to an inability to communicate one’s true intentions through juxtaposition and conflict between mothers and daughters and their cultures.

Technology is defined as machinery and equipment developed from the application of scientific knowledge. Its original use was meant solely for the service of humans, however overtime it has evolved into something much different. What was originally meant to be an assisting piece of machinery has changed almost every aspect of our culture. The way we think, communicate, lie, and even love has been impacted by the use of technology, and all of this is has made for interesting pieces of literature. In pieces such as Her and I, Robot, we see the evolution of robots and artificial intelligence into a more empathetic and humanlike creatures. This gradual change in our views of robots overtime speaks volumes to the evolution of technology. Technology in literature has become a reflection of human beings themselves, mirroring the very qualities of ourselves that make us human. By looking at the personality that technology takes on in literature, we can greater understand the aspects of ourselves that truly make us human.

In example, John read through the works of William Shakespeare and could process his emotions and empathize with the characters he read about. He understood emotion and passion would not have been able to experience these things under futuristic supervision. If like Bernard he did think outside of his jurisdiction, he would be seen as strange and would’ve felt the anxiety Bernard lived his whole life with. Instead, John was able to grow and let his mind wander with the pleasures of literature and the projection of emotions and passion were able to touch him, during his time with the indigenous

When humans created artificial intelligence, the machines believed they were superior than humans and rebelled. They survived by imprisoning the humans, thus believing that their lifestyle and culture was superior to the humans. This “slavery” of the humans is similar to the slavery that happened in the nineteenth century, where some people believed they were superior to others. Once the machines in the movie believed they did not need to labor to the humans.

With enough difficulties in the world, people try to avoid getting into relationships that will give them negative experiences. Some people have experiences which present them with too much friction with one another. Technology provided us with ways we can experience interactions that present less friction, interactions like the ones with Artificial intelligence. As Turkle says in her essay “At the robotic moment, more than ever, our willingness to engage with the inanimate does not depend on being deceived but wanting to fill in the blanks” (459). With the new technology advancing, more and more people are willing to give it a try to fulfill their desire of connecting with others. The use of AI in many ways allows people to explore themselves without the problem with having

Andy Clark, in Natural-Born Cyborgs, offers an extended argument that technology’s impact on and intertwining with ordinary biological human life is not to be feared, either psychologically or morally. Clark offers several key concepts towards his line of reasoning. Clark argues that a human being thinks and reasons based on the biological brain and body dynamically linked with the culture and technological tools transparently accessible to the human. This form of thinking and reasoning develops new "thinking systems" that which over time become second nature thoughts and reasons and are the basis of even newer "thinking systems." It is a repetitive cycle that continues forever being built upon previous systems.

The plot thickens as Theo and Samantha commence an unusual psychosexual relationship and he begins to introduce Samantha as his girlfriend. She (it) ushers in a breath of fresh air into Theo’s life, draws him out of himself and helps him get back to being the optimistic schlemiel he once was. At first, Theo thinks of himself as an outlier to be dating a disembodied operating system, but as he looks around, he finds that he is not alone pursuing a relationship with an OS. Similarly, Amy (Amy Adams), his friend, who has also recently ended her marriage, is getting caught up in a new relationship with an OS left behind by her estranged husband. What follows is a cautionary tale of a love affair between a man and his smartphone.

Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1962) identify over 150 scientific definitions of the concept of culture. Indeed, many authors have tried to define culture and this is why there are so many definitions and that a unique one is hard to find. First of all, Kroeber and Kluckholn (1952) assume that culture is a suite of patterns, implicit and explicit, “of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts” (p.47). Later, Hofstede adds that culture is “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another” (Hofstede, 1991, p.51). This definition is the most widely accepted one amongst practitioners. For Winthrop (1991), culture is the distinctive models of thoughts, actions and values that composed members of a society or a social group. In other words,

'Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another.' (Hofstede, 1991)