Her

Every now and then I watch a film that takes my breath away. Her is one of those films.

It is shot beautifully and the story is funny, heart wrenching and just incredibly thought provoking. 

*Semi Spoiler Alert is probably warranted!*

It offers a prediction of the future and at the heart of it, it is a love story. The story is about a man who falls in love with an artificial intelligence. It might sound ridiculous, but the film is so rich and layered that it is hard to do it justice in a review. So here are a few points that I love:

1) When his friend (played by Amy Adams) admits that she is dating an AI as well, they both have an emotional break through that is just epic, it’s a small moment but it works. It resonated with me because of a similar experience; I have tried online dating (obviously a stigma attached), when my friend told me she had done it as well, I couldn’t begin to explain the relief I felt! A shared experiencing is amazing.

2) Sometimes technology can make you feel closer to the human experience and it can also make you feel incredibly isolated, this film mirrors those feelings so well. We’ve all been there when Facebook or such, makes you feel incredibly debilitated.

3) I love Amy Adams

4) His love interest has no physical presence. Obviously Scarlet Johansson (who does the voice) is sexy as hell, but it relays the message that love is blind and shouldn’t be anchored in the physical.

5) It offers a prediction of what will happen when the ‘Singularity’ happens. Its not Skynet type movie, but how will humans contend with machines that are our intellectual superior? I’m just talking about processing speed.

6) Reaffirming the idea that you need to live for you.

Anyway thats my review over, I had to write something, my final point would be… SEE IT!

Philly Out!

Do we Really Have Free Will?

Sorry dudes this ones gonna be heavvvveeee.

I’ve been reading a lot about psychology recently. Specifically the area of free will. Is gripped my attention massively and left me feeling a little rattled, but strangely fascinated.

The area of neuroscience is making leaps and bounds. Break throughs in this field could reshape society in my humble opinion. For example a widely held theory is that there is actually no such thing as ‘evil’. It’s not actually a very scientific term ‘evil’, you can’t garner any information from it all. Psychopaths and suchs action’s can now be directly related to deficiencies (or differences) in their brain. However this leads to the worrying concept of ‘don’t blame me, blame my brain’!

During childhood our brains are constantly being conditioned by our parents, school and so on. This environmental affect has been proven to cause real change to the actual physiology of your brain. By adulthood this rate of change has slowed right down. Those filters in your head that you use to process decisions and situations are now pretty much set. So this begs the question. Do we actually have any free will? I like to think yes, but will the wider belief in the future be the opposite?

It’s not all bad though, I also see it as empowering. We berate ourselves for certain decisions we make. What if we take a step back and consider that we all have innate natures, pre-defined morality, empathy and so on. To go against it then is ridiculous. You are you and that won’t change.

I’m sorry if you didn’t enjoy this post, but we all know it wasn’t my fault… My brain did it… Uh oh spaghettio.

Philly out!

Sleep… Make it so!

I’m so tired right now… I’m currently considering the fact that sir Walter Raleigh was possibly a stupid get… That’s how tired I am.

When I’m this tired it feels like the world is falling apart, I become quite bitter and cynical. Just reading the paper on the way home becomes a tortuous affair; ”What is it all for?” I scream to myself. “Who cares if Rihanna accidentally sent a potentially damaging tweet, then immediately deleted it… Why is that front page news???” I look at fellow tube travelers with utter contempt; “They’ve been out drinking on a Friday night and they have the gumption to sit in front of me, someone who’s worked several 12 hour days in a row, actually look happy… The cheek of it.”

Ahhh but it’s not all bad… In 8 short hours normal philly will back, smiling from ear to ear and ready to tackle what the day has in store! Oh normal (future) Philly, you lucky so and so (that said I might hinder his recovery by staying up and watching 90s xmen cartoons… Why should future me have it all?).

Philly out y’all!

 

Featured image taken from: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/

Weirdos of the World Unite

“Is anything as strange as a normal person… Is anyone as a cruel as a normal person?”

My first foray into poetry (if you can call it that!) I was inspired after listening to ‘At the bottom of everything’ by Bright Eyes (thanks to a work colleague pointing me in its general direction!) Here goes nuttin:

Weirdos of the World Unite

Let’s all join the weirdo revolution

Forget about childhood indoctrination

Cancel membership in the living dead

Ain’t all about making bread

We don’t have to feel disconnected

Reach out and feel protected

Please push back and fight

Weirdos of the world unite

Making and Breaking Friends in LDN

Friends… everybody needs them. I live a long long way from home now and friends are vital to my survival dammit!

Whilst living down saaaaarf I’ve actually made a few new friends (who would have funk it). It was actually when I stopped actively trying to find new friends that I then found new friends (*cue camp northern voice* ‘ohh what am I like?’).

As well as making new mateys I’ve also tried my best to maintain as many of my already well established friendships. These are now scattered all around the UK, mostly uni Mateys, my hometown homies are now as thin as ice. Maintaining friendships becomes a balancing act… One that I’m terrible at. I’m really good at maintaining about two close friendships at a time, anymore and it all falls apart (I’m a donkey… A friendship donkey).

It’s a tough old game. That said some relationships seem absolutely immune to time and distance; Every time you meet up it takes mere moments to kick back into that familiar enjoyable groove (next stop BFF city y’all).

There’s also the ugly, rusty side of the coin (I’m big on terrible metaphors right now). That side is the friendships that unfortunately wither away. Usually for any multitude of possible reasons; Be it lack of effort, distance or maybe you’re now in different places and have essentially outgrown your friendship (who knows, I’m not one to judge).

For me though the absolute worse case scenario is when friendships become toxic. This person is now an unwelcome negative presence in your life. I have experienced this, as I’m sure you have. I’d been friends with this particular person for ages (almost 7 years). Naturally I forgave loads to start with, ‘maybe it was just phase?’  However they then started to develop a real knack for making me feel small. Eventually I got to a point where I decided that I was gonna care less about making everyone else happy and more about being true to myself. Enough was enough, it was time to cut that toxic friend loose and move on. I didn’t/won’t regret it (I live my life in multiple tenses). All negatives aside though (especially from that particularly troublesome last paragraph).

I just want to echo the note I started on, I feel very grateful for the friends I have right now and I wouldn’t change them for the world (well maybe for the world… I wouldn’t change them for other less good friends though… my grammar and vocab needs no improvement I think that’s clear to see).

Anyhow on an absolute last final note (I’m talking absolute zero, fellow science nerds) I promise to write something more manly in my next blog.. Maybe about football… or maybe cars… I don’t actually like cars… Trains are  much much better and more fun… Righhhhhhht I’m off to watch utopia on catch up at 1am in the morning.

Philly out!!!

 

Featured image: http://studentblogs.le.ac.uk/