digital and human bids for connection bids for attention there’s a theme across startups to build conversational AI. the world within her is a world with no edges, only curved corners. pink and coral hues punctured by algorithmic blue light. isn’t it so ironic that the first thing to be automated away was human intimacy, but artifacts of human connection remain?
- could connect to hume ai paradoxes within automating human intimacy while keeping physical tokens of connection
- like how irl, my friend resolved to write a postcard in his 2025 bingo. i still write hand-written notes to my friends, even if my chickenscratch is barely legible.
- physical tokens lend themselves to nostalgia. i barely stir when filtering through old texts from an ex - but something primordial inside me aches when i stumble upon their love letters.
- as a leftie i had a love-hate relationship with writing cards. my hand would always smudge the muji .38 and i’d have to start over. now i blast texts with sterility - there’s no fingerints, no left-hand residue, no tears.
jackielgu.github.io/please-talk-to-me/
on greeting cards
as a kid i loved my friends’ birthday parties - not for the festivities but for a chance to crack open my scrapbooking kit and make them a homemade card. id walk down the aisles of cvs for inspiration and giggle at the cheesy ones with princesses and bears and the millenial memes. i could do so much better.
i believed in the craft of cards as much as any 10-year old could - folding construction paper and doodling rabbits and birthday cakes and pouring my heart out via barely legible chicken scratch. a deep romantic inspired by the likes of tatbilb, i wrote childhood flames love letters on notebook paper that surely got crumpled up in the middle of their physics binders. the art of note-giving is sacred to me, and maybe it’s because of that i’m so amused by the irony within movies like her - where theodore’s whole job is to write greeting cards for others. the world within her is a world with no edges, only curved corners. pink and coral hues punctured by algorithmic blue light. isn’t it so ironic that the first thing to be automated away was human intimacy, but artifacts of human connection remain?
maybe this world is less far away than we would imagine. it’s 2025, the same year as her, where theodore writes greeting cards. we’ve long used pre-written sentiments as a scaffolding for our own emotions. what does it mean when we lean on other people and things to communicate what’s hidden away in our heart?
outsourcing vulnerability
one time a friend was breaking up with her boyfriend (important: over snapchat) and handed her phone to me to stake the final nail in the coffin. chatgpt could generate a query instantaneously but i buffered, drowning in overthinking on what someone could say. empathy overdrive - as much as i had to put myself in her shoes, i’d also had to imagine his reaction as well. writing heartfelt letters for others while emotionally stunted themselves. lest we forget tom from 500 days of summer, whose whole job was interpreting romance for others when he couldn’t read the signs from his doomed relationship.
digital handwriting
asad;
physicality
is it the human touch we long for? outside of sight and sound, touch is an under-analyzed dimension. the kids fed up with layers of abstraction. they’re using nostalgia as rebellion, going back to board games and vinyl records and film cameras for the feeling analogue facilitates. a quiet resistance, intentional friction in the face of break-neck progress. like how irl, my friend resolved to write a postcard in his 2025 bingo. i still write hand-written notes to my friends, even if my chickenscratch is barely legible.
- physical tokens lend themselves to nostalgia. i barely stir when filtering through old texts from an ex - but there is a glass cage within me that cracks when i stumble upon an old love letters. but at the same time - i’ve seen three vinyl records from friends and they all gather dust. i ordered a canon sure shot earlier this month i haven’t gotten a chance to unbox.
we are a far cry from her perhaps because ai lacks the embodiment it once had.
vulnerability without risk, without trust
without vulnerability, there’s no true intimacy. the turning point in the movie is when samantha reveals she doesn’t need theodore the way he needs her, highlighting the brutal truth: AI doesn’t need us. relationships require mutual trust, vulnerability. we wouldn’t trust a human partner who only reflects what we want to see - why should ai be any different? a plant falters under artifical light but blooms under the sun - we are no different.
what really makes a greeting card real? is it any different if an ai wrote i love you versus someone in a greeting card company, versus 14-year old annie biting at the end of her pen with her braces? consider the physical object against the intangibles - the human choice to reach for connection.
physical tokens demand something digital ones can’t replicate: presence. A vinyl record forces you to be in the room. a handwritten letter bears the accidental wear and tear of its writer. a film photo proves that we exist, at a time and place, and that we were moved to capture that moment in all its reality. these aren’t just nostalgic preferences - they’re anchors in an increasingly virtual world.
is it empathy? is it feeling?
What is semantic space theory? • Hume AI predict emotional needs vs replicating sentience illusion of reciprocity - users form emotoinal bonds with ai but relationship is one-sided think of character ai
cartesia ai - u can control voice emotion through an api.
inworld ai - gaming and immersion faciltiated by emotion.
full circle - irony that my dad makes gen ai videos as i write him handwritten letters