The feelies--coming to a theater near you?

  

After my post about how computers are learning to "read" human emotion through facial recognition and measurement with bio-sensors, I came across this video explaining the  "Emotion Jacket" created by Philips Research. Using haptic technology, the jacket employs the human response to touch to stimulate emotion.

The applications for movies and gaming are obvious,  and we may see jackets like this joining 3D glasses to create the real life "feelies" that kept people compliant and entertained in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." And I don't even need to mention the fact that the sex industry is always an early adopter--and driver--of technological innovation. (Check out the wikipedia entry for Woody Allen's orgasmitron. Devices that simulate/stimulate orgasm are fairly common in movies and science fiction.)  Beyond that, it doesn't take much to imagine how useful such technology might be for a torturer, who could put a victim through sheer hell but never cause lasting bodily harm.

Although many a dog lover would argue otherwise, most people assume that the ability to feel emotion and respond to the emotions of others is a core attribute of being human. I feel, therefore I am. Yet these technologies are rapidly erasing that distinction between man and machine. Once again we are forced to confront the question: What does it mean to be human? Or does that even matter if you get stars in your eyes and butterflies in your stomach everytime your new robot boyfriend touches your hand?

So what do you think? If it looks like love and feels like love is it really love, even if induced by skin conductance and a haptic interface?

 

 

Comments

[lindsay]

Shakespeare tried to tackle this question in Midsummer's when Puck runs around with his fairy potion and makes Titania fall in love with an ass. The difference, I suppose, is that Shakespeare uses a purely fictional world to comment on the fickle nature of love, and now we are getting closer and closer to entering into a world in which that fiction is a reality and maybe love is not so fickle, but can be controlled.

Can you be in love with someone who is not in love with you? Or, is that not really love? Is that just an idea about love that you are projecting onto another person? Doesn't there have to be some sort of interaction, if even in the form of rejection? And can you ever truly interact with a robot? I guess when it comes to sex this sort of thing already exists in the form of vibrators, but I don't know anyone who is in love with a vibrator.

Perphaps eventually we will redefine the ways that we talk about love. We'll have "natural" love (the messy, accidental kind that happens to you that you have no control over) and the more convenient "artifical" love, good for getting over a bad break-up.