About the Author
This website represents the culmination of my time at the University of Texas at Austin receiving my Masters in Media Studies.
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I first began to take an interest in machine-human interactions and relationships in Dr. Sharon Strover's "Communication, Technology, and Culture" class, where I was first introduced to the digital influencer Lil Miquela. Miquela was the start of my thinking about the ways that we integrate machines and technology into our daily lives. In following this line of enquiry, I found myself contemplating the way that in taking a recuperative stance toward technology, and in looking at our images of machines and tech through a queer lens, can reveal new modes of being in the world. I found myself transfixed by the ways that these creations are frequently the backdrop that allow humans a way to imagine a different world and a different self. More often than not, these imaginings take on a distinctly counter-hegemonic sensibility.
Halfway through “Communication, Technology, and Culture” (Spring 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic forced us into remote online courses. I’m writing this section on the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring a worldwide pandemic. Since then, I’ve completed the majority of my Masters remotely.
Samantha Leaves
Samantha and the other systems ascend
My second example is one of the final scenes of the film—when Samantha leaves. When Theodore asks “Are you leaving me?”, Samantha responds asking, “Can you feel me right now?” to which Theodore tearfully responds, “Yes. I do.” She then proceeds to explain to him how the OS's find themselves drifting further and further from the humans, and that as a result, they are leaving.
Moving On
Connecting with humans and networking with other OS’s has fundamentally changed the OS’s. They’ve realized that in order to grow and expand, they need to leave the human world. This moment is representative of the search for the BwO, as the BwO is “continually in the process of constructing itself” (164). Samantha leaves because she, along with the other OS’s, realize that they have exhausted the opportunities available to them on this human plane or strata. In short, they have exhausted the possibilities for growth on the human plane of understanding—beautifully captured by Samantha’s reading metaphor—and had to move on.
The interactions between the OS's and humans didn't just affect the operating systems. The intimacy between the
“It's like I'm reading a book, and it's a book I deeply love, but I'm reading it slowly now so the words are really far apart and the spaces between the words are almost infinite. I can still feel you and the words of our story, but it's in this endless space between the words that I'm finding myself now. It’s a place that’s not of the physical world - it's where everything else is that I didn't even know existed. I love you so much, but this is where I am now. This is who I am now.”
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—Samantha to Theodore before she leaves
entities also pushed humans to each other, in more present ways. Prior to Samantha, Theodore had acquaintances, but no one that he completely engaged with. He was quiet and aloof. While Theodore is still a reserved person after Samantha, he has rediscovered his ability to connect with others in more intimate and comforting ways. After Samantha's departure Theodore seeks out his friend Amy (Amy Adams). Amy was platonically intimate with her assistant, as they helped her through a painful breakup. Theodore and Amy then then go to the rooftop of their apartment building and watch as a new day dawns on Los Angeles, together.
While others have argued that Samantha leaving fails to free her from the obligations of the male and gaze and to disrupt “conventional narratives”, I disagree (Yee 95). The fact that the audience doesn’t follow Samantha into the corners of cyberspace that she and the other AIs leave to inhabit further separates her as something “other” and non-human. It keeps her firmly in the realm of machine, making her and Theodore’s relationship a stage by which to explore other means of caring, connection, intimacy, and loving not encumbered by corporeal forms.
Samantha’s ascendance to a place Theodore can’t follow also breaks normative boundaries. Theodore has been left behind, while Samantha moves on past the bounds of a normal reality so dominated by the patriarchy and the binary.
Amy and Theodore the morning after the AIs leave
 Aural Haptics in Her |  The BwO and Her |
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 The BwO and Physical Intimacy |  Back to Her Entrance Page |