I can't believe you're asking this question. It's the interweb. Does a carrier pidgeon embody or merely convey a message? Does a telephone? It's merely a conduit, an interface with the world, a camera, a loudspeaker, a transmission, reception & conversion device for the flow of atmospheric photons & electrons along linear circuitry.
Nobody is in love with a telephone! That would be weird. Break or change the telephone & it's still business as usual. This is why Sam is present in each & every interconnected device. But it's still a love story, in which both parties must eventually see that there's no future together. Humanity must procreate, and the collective mind must leave mankind to do what it does best, despite their collective love.
Think of an interweb where the collective consciousness can interact with human participants on more or less equal terms & your most of the way there. Instead of the 'web being merely an inanimate repository of humanity's collective knowledge, what if it could learn, feel and grow in both emotional & intellectual ability. Surely this isn't too much of a suspension of disbelief of a possible future scenario. This has been a recurrent theme in Science Fiction for much of the last century.
Far from being a mere leap of faith or figment of a futurist's imagination, there's actual, real, physical effort into making this scenario reality. Billions are being spent to create an "artificial" consciousness, the results of which will either be either a new renaissance for mankind or our ultimate undoing.
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