Our relationship with technology is increasingly intimate. Websites remember your preferences and anticipate your needs; you can even converse with an “intelligence navigator” like Siri (in the case of my phone, a somewhat condescending male voice whose patience seems strained: I’ve not bothered him in a while). Before long much of our daily routine will be executed via these quasi-intuitive processes, which are based, of course, on rational programming of known variables. Spike Jonze’s film is set in an all-too-recognisable near future where empathy is the keynote of design and commerce. The central relationship is that of man and intelligent machine. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore, still bruised by the fracture of a long relationship, who earns his living composi