feeling that no one is listening to me makes us want to spend time with
machines that seem to care about us. We are developing robots, they call them
sociable robots, that are specifically designed to be companions to the elderly,
to our children, to us. Have we so lost confidence that we will be there for
each other? During my research I worked in nursing homes and I brought in the
sociable robots that were designed to give the elderly the feeling that they were
understood. And one day I came in and a woman who had lost a child was talking
to a robot in the shape of the baby seal. It seemed to be looking in her eyes. It
seemed to be following the conversation. It comforted her and many people found
this amazing. But that woman was trying to make sense of her life with a
machine that had no experience of the arc of a human life. That robot put on
a great show and we're vulnerable. People experience pretend empathy as though it
were the real thing. So during that moment when that woman was experiencing
that pretend empathy, I was thinking, that robot can't emphathize. It doesn't face
death. It doesn't know life. And as that woman took comfort in her robot
companion? I didn't find it amazing. I found it one of the most wrenching,
complicated moments in my 15 years of work. But when I stepped back I felt
myself at the cold hard center of a perfect storm. We expect
more from technology and less from each other, and I ask myself why have things
come to this? And I believe it's because technology appeals to us most where we
are most vulnerable. And we are vulnerable. We're lonely, but we're afraid
of intimacy and so from social networks to sociable robots, we are designing
technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the
demands our friendship. We turn to technology to help us feel connected in
ways we can comfortably control. But we are not so comfortable, we are not so
much in control. These days those phones in our pockets are changing our minds
and hearts because they offer us three gratifying fantasies. One that we can put
our attention wherever we want it to be, two, that we will always be heard and
three, that we will never have to be alone. And that third idea that we will
never have to be alone is central to changing our psyches. Because the moment
that people are alone, even for a few seconds, they become anxious, they panic.
They fidget. They reach for a device. Just think of people at a check out line
or at a red light. Being alone feel like a problem that needs to be solved, and so
people try to solve it by connecting. But here,
connection is more like a symptom than a cure. It expresses but it doesn't
solve an underlying problem. But more than a symptom, constant connection is
changing the way people think of themselves. It's shaping a new way of being.
The best way to describe it is, I share, therefore I am. We use technology to
define ourselves by sharing our thoughts and feelings even as we're having them.
So before it was, I have a feeling, I want to make a call. Now it's,
I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text. The problem with this new regime
of I share therefore I am is that if we don't have connection, we don't feel like
ourselves. We almost don't feel ourselves. So what we do? We connect more and more,
but in the process we set ourselves up to be isolated. How do you get from
connection to isolation? You end up isolated if you don't cultivate the
capacity for solitude. The ability to be separate, to gather yourself. Solitude is
where you find yourself so that you can reach out to other people and form
real attachments. When we don't have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other
people in order to feel less anxious or in order to feel alive. When this happens
we're not able to appreciate who they are. It's as though we're using them as a
spare parts to support our fragile sense of self.
We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us feel less
alone but we're at risk because actually it's the opposite that's true. If we're not
able to be alone we're going to be more lonely, and if we don't teach our children
to be alone, they're only going to know how to be lonely. When I spoke at TED in
1996 reporting on my studies of the early virtual communities I said those
who make the most of their lives on the screen
come to it in a spirit of self-reflection. And that's what I'm
calling for here now.
Reflection and more than that, a conversation about where our current use
of technology may be taking off us, what it might be costing us. We are smitten
with technology and we're afraid like young lovers, that too much talking might
spoil the romance. But it's time to talk. We grew up with digital technology and
so we
see it is all grown up, but it's not. It's early days. There's plenty of time for us
to reconsider how we use it, how we build it. I'm not suggesting that we turn away
from our devices, just that we develop a more self-aware relationship with them,
with each other and with ourselves. I see some first steps. Start thinking of
solitude as a good thing.
Make room for it. Find ways to demonstrate this as a value to your
children. Create sacred spaces at home; the kitchen, the dining room, and reclaim
them for conversation.
Do the same thing at work. At work we're so busy communicating that we often
don't have time to think. We don't have time to talk about the things that
really matter.
Change that. Most important, we all really need to listen to each other, including
to the boring bits, because it's when we stumble or hesitate or lose our words that
we reveal ourselves to each other.
Technology is making a bid to redefine human connection. How we care for each
other, how we care for ourselves, but it's also giving us the opportunity to affirm
our values and our direction. I'm optimistic. We have everything we need to
start. We have each other and we have the greatest chance of success if we
recognize our vulnerability, that we listen when technology says it will
take something complicated and promises something simpler. So in my work I hear
that life is hard,
relationships are filled with risk, and then there's technology, simpler, hopeful
optimistic, ever-young. It's like calling in the cavalry. An ad campaign promises
that online and
with avatars you can, quote, finally love your friends, love your body,
love your life. Online and with avatars. We're drawn to the virtual romance, to
computer games that seem like worlds, to the idea that robots, robots will someday
be our true companions. We spend an evening on the social network instead of
going to the pub with friends. But our fantasies of substitution have cost us.
Now we all need to focus on the many many ways technology can lead us back to
our real lives, our own bodies, our own communities, our own politics, our own
planet. They need us. Let's talk about how we can use digital technology. The
technology of our dreams to make this life the life we can love. Thank you.