Connected....but alone.

The TED Radio Hour recently featured this talk, along with the TEDTalk by Sherry Turkle, "Connected, but alone. During the talk,Turkle recounts a story about a elderly women in a nursing home that was given a robot Seal as a companion.

"We're 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 these 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 a 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 empathize. 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."

Turkle adds, That woman, at the end of her life deserves a person to talk to.

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/25/172900833/do-we-need-humans

"Researchers... suggest that loneliness is becoming more common in the United States. When polled as part of a 1984 questionnaire, respondents most frequently reported having three close confidants. When the question was asked again in 2004, the most common response was zero confidants. This trend is unfortunate, since experts believe that it is not the quantity of social interaction that combats loneliness, but that it is the quality. Having just three or four close friends is enough to ward off loneliness and reduce the negative health consequences associated with this state of mind."

"Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone. It fine-tunes your brain's social instincts. It primes you to do things that strengthen close relationships. Oxytocin makes you crave physical contact with your friends and family. It enhances your empathy. It even makes you more willing to help and support the people you care about. Some people have even suggested we should snort oxytocin to become more compassionate and caring. But here's what most people don't understand about oxytocin. It's a stress hormone. Your pituitary gland pumps this stuff out as part of the stress response. It's as much a part of your stress response as the adrenaline that makes your heart pound. And when oxytocin is released in the stress response, it is motivating you to seek support. Your biological stress response is nudging you to tell someone how you feel instead of bottling it up. Your stress response wants to make sure you notice when someone else in your life is struggling so that you can support each other. When life is difficult, your stress response wants you to be surrounded by people who care about you."

Another TEDTalk that was featured on the same TED Radio Hour was given by Abraham Verghese, a physician that makes the claim, "that when we shortcut the physical exam, when we lean towards ordering tests instead of talking to and examining the patient, we not only overlook simple diagnoses that can be diagnosed at a treatable, early stage, but we're losing much more than that. We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship."
 "I've gotten into some trouble in Silicon Valley for saying that the patient in the bed has almost become an icon for the real patient who's in the computer. I've actually coined a term for that entity in the computer. I call it the iPatient. The iPatient is getting wonderful care all across America. The real patient often wonders, where is everyone?"

http://www.ted.com/talks/abraham_verghese_a_doctor_s_touch.html.

I will offer that we are losing this "ritual," that Verghese speaks of, and this "intimacy," as Turkle puts it, in all of our relationships. The feeling that no one is listening to me make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.   We expect more from technology and less from each other. Turkle asks "Why have things come to this?"  I will ask, "What can we do about it?"  How do we  reduce the "negative health consequences" associated with being connected but alone?  How do we learn to expect more from each other, again?

You can also find the Sherry Turkle TEDTalk here:  http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html