Alone together

http://alonetogetherbook.com/

Shallow communication technologies may lead to shallow lives.

First we have sociable robots which have very limited ability to simulate emotions, yet children and adults seem eager to imbue them with personality and find their simplicity sometimes better than a complex demanding human companion.
I think the answer to the question "Don't we have people for this jobs?" referring to babysitters or companions for the elderly is a clear "No". The changing demographics, the long gone multi-generational home and the demand for better productive jobs, are all factors which push society to have a greater need and smaller availability for companions. While current robots are inadequate to replace human companionship, I think technology has a greater change to improve, than culture to fill in the gaps.

Them the attention turns to the change in communication patterns from letter, to phone, to e-mail, to IM and from landline to tethered virtual office and high-frequency text messaging. I found the lack of experience with real-time human communication (in-person or phone) displayed by teenage subjects in the book alarming. This training in having shallow text message communications might interfere with these teenagers ability to adapt to the real world of interpersonal relationships, but it might make them better able to have a wider contact network on which to rely. Maybe with advances in technologies all these communications can be integrated into a single audio-visual stream which might be efficient and engaging enough.

On the other hand, we should frown upon mixing real-time communication (in-person, phone) with virtual-time communication (texting, IM, facebook, email), because this mixing is what turn potential personal and intimate moments into a shallow distributed attention moment.

"Technology is bad, because people are not strong enough to resist its pull." This sums up a lot of the problems of modern life, including appealing food which makes us fat, convenient transportation which makes us immobile, advertising which makes us buy unneeded stuff, casinos which build alluring devices to part us from our money, illicit drugs which give us instant pleasure for a later crash, manipulative politicians which blind us to our best interest, tv which gives entertainment for no effort, video games which give strong rewards for little real effort and communication technology which makes us build barriers to live human interactions. When confronted with these problems, I don't think the standard appeal to 'willpower' is enough, because we are not evolved to resist this wave of temptations. So maybe we should acknowledge our limitations and build our culture around them.