PassW0rd – 13th February 2019

Speaker A: This program is brought to you by Resonance 104.4 FM. If you like what you hear and want to support our work, please make a donation at fundraiser.resonance.fm.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to Password on Resonance FM. Taking technology to task for the way it takes over our lives. Today we ask, does tech make us lonely? And if that seems like a strange question, consider this: loneliness has now been recognized as a killer disease. It can have an impact on your life expectancy and is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Age UK research shows 1.2 million older people are chronically lonely, and the study of 18-year-olds published in the Psychological Medicine journal revealed between 27 and 31% of them felt isolated and left out. Britain’s government has appointed the world’s first Minister for Loneliness. That was Tracy Crouch, but she She’s been reshuffled already, and Mims Davis now wears the crown of thorns. Unfortunately, she was too busy to talk to us, so at the moment she may not be that lonely. Or is she? We will hear more later on about how, as the singer Bryan Ferry once crooned, you can be lonely in a crowded room. Among its 1.2 million older people who told Age UK they have lonely lives, technology appears to be an obstacle. Alan Wardle is a spokesman for The Silver Line, a helpline that offers befriending on the phone for people who need someone to talk to. He’s been talking to Password’s Jane Wyatt.

Speaker A: I mean, I think many of us take for granted these days that iPhones and the like have become such a part of the fabric of our lives so quickly quickly that I think sometimes we forget that older people may have not kept up in the same way. Obviously there are some older people who are very digitally savvy, but at The Silver Line we know, we’ve recently surveyed our older people who call us and two-thirds of them aren’t connected to the internet at all in any way. And particularly the older they are, the less likely they are to be connected. And I think how that manifests itself can be in quite obvious ways, as in they don’t have phones. But it can sometimes just be the subtler things that is more difficult for older people. So things like watching a TV programme and more information is provided online automatically, so that’s something. So many public services are online, so people, a lot of our callers call the helpline and say they’ve tried to get through to the council and they’re just constantly being driven to go online. And even with family and friends, so families who share photographs via WhatsApp, for instance. And also we know that when families are out for dinner, old people are very observant of the fact that sometimes they’re sitting there and everyone else is buried into the phone and not speaking to each other. So it does create a bit of a digital divide, and I think it’s something that all of us need to reflect on and think about how we make sure that we are not excluded excluding older people from the way that we live our lives these days.

Speaker B: Right, and what effect does this exclusion typically have on an older person’s health and well-being, physical and mental?

Speaker A: Loneliness is one of the— it’s a growing recognition this is actually a public health issue in the way that smoking and obesity have been recognised as public health issues. That’s been physically shown, but also the Impact on people’s mental health as well is quite significant too. So in terms of, and we know this from our calls to our helpline, loneliness breeds anxiety, depression, it makes people very unhappy. And it’s quite profound, you know, there are 1.2 million lonely older people in the UK. It affects all demographics absolutely, but I think older people particularly because of the disconnection from the tech world and how we are living our lives. The fact that local bank branches are closing, local post offices are closing, their ability just to pop out and go and have a chat in the bank queue is not the same anymore, and that does have effects. That affects people’s physical health and their mental health too.

Speaker B: How can digital communications be used to help older people?

Speaker A: Well, a lot of older people are very digitally savvy, and I think we’ll find as generations age, those who have worked with computers in the tech age will be more adept with this as they get older. We’re just at the moment where a lot of older people have never used computers or the web and are quite disconnected from it. But a lot of them are, a lot of them are very connected to it, and those who are connected find it very useful because it means they can be connected to like-minded people in their communities and their areas. Who share interests on various things, and not even within the communities, of course, across the world. So it’s not that digital is bad. I think it’s just that the rapid way in which society has changed in terms of digital has left some older people behind. And I think we just need to make sure that we’re mindful of that and make sure that those old people are still given the chance to participate fully in life.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker D: And are there technological fixes for this?

Speaker E: For example, if older people find it difficult to hold a smartphone or manipulate a stylus.

Speaker B: I think there can be probably physical barriers.

Speaker A: Yeah, there can be. I mean, I don’t know if there’s any evidence of older people having particular problems with iPhones. I mean, I think that might become an issue in the future when people who have used them become less able to use them because they become more physically infirm. But I think at the moment we have a situation where older people, so particularly those in their upper 70s, 80s, 90s, who have never had, didn’t see the need for mobile phones, and of course smartphones came in with all the wizardry that they have, and people who never felt the need for those, they now feel a bit scared from them as well. So it’s again, and I think, you know, it’s a societal thing. Public services need to make sure that they are meeting the needs of older people, service providers too, but, you know, families as well, how families communicate with their grandparents, if that’s what it is, their aunts and uncles who are of a certain age, and recognising that things that people like, you know, older people in the past, you would take a photograph album around to show photos, but if they’re all being shared electronically with the rest of the family, that cuts older people out from that. So how do you make sure that you are making sure that the older people in your lives have got the— are able to navigate this digital world with help and support? Support so that they are integrated in the way that they ought to be.

Speaker B: Being excluded from technology raises resentment in itself. I first discovered this in a conversation with Ray Sossana, a spokesman for the Kalahari Bushmen, back in 1992 near Kade in Botswana. He pointed to an aeroplane overhead and said, “I want to know how that plane works and to fly in it.” but we’re told that if we want to stay in our ancestral home that we have to live like anthropological curiosities. I want to be treated like other black men. Not being engaged with technology creates anxiety. Sisana thought that not being involved with technology meant that the Bushmen were being left behind. As Alan Wardle says, older people also feel left behind because the younger generations find friends and followers in Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp groups. We call them social media, but are they really antisocial? Some experts believe they encourage users to believe everyone else is having fun, eating good-looking dinners, dating good-looking people, and traveling to exotic locations. Worse, they enable cybermobbing, a form of bullying that can go on all day. Researchers at the Universities of Swansea, Birmingham, and Oxford have found that victims of cyberbullying are almost 2.5 times as likely to self-harm and have suicidal thoughts than their peers. Graphic photos of self-inflicted injuries will now be blocked by social media channels after Health Secretary Matt Hancock met last week with the bosses of Instagram, Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, TechUK, the Internet Association UK, and the Samaritans charity, which works to prevent suicide. The Royal College of Paediatricians has just published its first guidelines on screen time based on a survey of young people aged 11 to 26. The young people themselves reported that excessive screen time led to a lack of social connections, sleepless nights, and eye strain. And the paediatricians also found a link to obesity through snacking on starchy foods while on screen. That all sounds like a lot of pressure building up for tougher laws to prevent what are now being called ‘internet harms’ by lawmakers, something the government is expected to underline in a digital culture, media, and sport white paper expected this spring. However, I’ve been talking to the developmental psychologist and author of The Secret Life of a Four-Year-Old, Dr. Paul Vasse. He says that some of this is scaremongering and there’s not yet enough data to come to firm conclusions.

Speaker F: It’s very hard to pick apart the screen exposure to other aspects of the family, so Parents and families where children spend kind of a lot, a lot, a lot of unaccompanied time in front of the screens also tend to be the kinds of families that wouldn’t feed their child such a varied diet and be different in lots of other ways. And it’s a very, very hard, tricky job for us as scientists to pull apart the screen-related differences to the other related differences. I mean, the stuff that— so one big review came out in a very good kind of good quality journal that had really looked at this very, very carefully. And they were kind of looking at the aggregated results across the large— a large number of different studies that have been done since screens first started. TV’s been widespread since the ’50s or ’60s. So we’ve got a reasonable amount of evidence on this question now. And that kind of review of all these different studies suggested that across all of the studies, if there is a relationship between screen exposure and attention deficit outcomes, it’s a very, very small one. So there are some studies suggested there is a link, some suggested that there isn’t. But if you pull them all together, it suggests that there is one. It accounts for 2% of the variance in kind of attention deficit outcomes. That said, it might be a bit more complicated than that, Peter. There’s research suggesting that the relationship might be stronger in boys than girls, for example. But overall, the weight of the evidence at the moment is there are probably effects of kind of how childhood is changing on children. But if they are kind of, they’re complex, you know, some good effects, some bad effects, but often the effects aren’t as big as we worry that they might be.

Speaker B: So, are we moving towards a state where the screens can really act as babysitters?

Speaker F: Can it replace humans? Probably not. I don’t think most people would want it to. I don’t think it’s their urge. A lot of kids, given a choice, if they’re in a room with screens, just because they get so much learning from them, they will often really, really gravitate to them. But a lot of the time, I think if it was left up to children, they enjoy a cuddle with their parents. They enjoy listening, lying in bed at night and listening to a story the old-fashioned way, where your parents are kind of sitting there telling you the story and you can hear your parents’ kind of chest resonating as you’re speaking. And there’s research suggesting that children find the kind of, the deeper resonance of an adult voice kind of very relaxing when they’re listening. It’s something that helps them go to sleep. So no, I don’t think it can replace it. I mean, in a lot of ways, Peter, we focus on the change. But for example, with this Masha and the Bear thing, which is the most popular animated series ever, 3.4 billion views for one particular episode. What’s nice about it is that it’s based on a Russian story. It’s based on a story where a girl goes into this world where there are no adults, and she goes off and has adventures. But there’s this adult-like figure of a bear who like protects her and saves her when she gets into scrapes, but doesn’t tell her what to do the way an adult does. And that is such a universal for children’s literature. You’ve gone back to, you know, all the boarding school stories, Harry Potter, kind of Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, kind of Roald Dahl, VFG, what I had when I was a kid, back to Peter Pan, Enid Blyton. This idea of children being transported to a world where their parents aren’t there, having their adventures, but you’ve got like a safe adult-like figure there to save them when things go wrong. So things are changing, children are consuming information lots of different ways, but your basic urge, the kinds of stories that they love to hear, those really aren’t changing.

Speaker B: As Paul Vass says, the sound of a voice is comforting. Voice is the next big thing in technology, with Alexa, Cortana, and other AI-generated talking gadgets delivering news, chatting about the weather, and providing conversations for lonely souls, including people with dementia who can ask the same question a thousand times. And get the same answer 1,000 times because Alexa is a tolerant machine. Once again, technology offers solutions to the problems it creates. Scientists at the University of Chicago are even working on a cure for loneliness in the form of a pill. Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo is leading the research, which was started by her late husband John who passed away a year ago. She says the pill won’t end loneliness for widows like herself, but will make it more bearable.

Speaker G: Loneliness is an evolutionary basis. It’s like any other biological signal. We have this signal to tell us that something is wrong with our connections or our social environment, and we need to do something to survive. So I often equate loneliness to thirst, and I think like thirst, once you realize that you are thirsty, it is too late. You have been dehydrated for a few hours or a few days. And loneliness is very similar in that way. Once you realize you are lonely, you have been lonely for a few hours, days, or weeks. And all you can see are the consequences, the symptoms. Symptoms associated with loneliness. For instance, we know that lonely individuals will be more depressed, a person who is lonely will be more irritable, more self-centered, and will see more negative events or have more negative thoughts than others.

Speaker E: What you appear to be saying is that loneliness is a state of mind, that if you can be not with anybody but not feel alone.

Speaker B: It’s just this notion of feeling alone that basically gets us down.

Speaker G: Absolutely. And so, for instance, you can see someone on Valentine’s Day having dinner on their own and not feeling lonely. They might feel about their spouse, about their lost friends or lost husband, and think about their picture, think about the good memories they had, and not feel lonely. And in terms, you can also see a couple, like, being together physically at dinner but feeling extremely lonely if they are with an estranged partner. It’s really how you perceive reality. To go back to this pharmacological treatment, it’s not a substitute for meaningful relationships. It’s just an adjunct therapy, if it normalizes the levels that are deficient, that could help people perceive their environment in a less threatening way than they perceive it when they feel lonely. But then it’s like when you are dehydrated, you need to take water and electrolytes, so you need both. So the pharmacological treatments would be necessary but not sufficient to form and maintain meaningful, healthy relationships with others.

Speaker B: Those lonely hearts who want more than just something to talk to can also find solutions through internet dating sites and apps like Tinder or Grindr. These are now so well established that they include personal data and photos from millions of potential lovers. Artificial intelligence allegedly matches your profile to a partner who will fulfill your stated wishes, knows where you are through geolocation, and with a swift swipe or a quick wink, you have a date. Or do you? What if that attractive-looking person in the photo is fake? Why are they asking for money? Marcel Kuta, an oil industry consultant from Woolwich, just won back more than £180,000 in a court case from the woman he met on Tinder who claimed to be single and an investment banker. She was neither. The City of London Police say one dating scam is reported every 3 hours in the UK. And last year, and I quote, cybercriminals scammed lovestruck Brits out of £27 million. The police have made a YouTube animation to warn us.

Speaker H: Online dating is one of the most popular ways to meet someone nowadays. That’s not surprising. It’s a great way to find someone new. Who wouldn’t like a person who looks good, is successful, seems lots of fun, and is really interested in you? They shower you with compliments and are very fast to show their affection. And quite quickly, they suggest you use alternative contact methods so you can chat outside the dating service you’re using, claiming it’s easier that way. Usually, you’d set up a place to meet in public and see if there’s chemistry. But sometimes the person on the other end starts to make excuses. It’s hard to meet because they’re abroad and they need money for a ticket to fly over. Or there’s a debt they must pay off and they just need a small amount of cash to sort something out. So they ask you for money. You trust them. You’ve been chatting for weeks, months, even longer. The problem is not everyone’s looking for love. Fraudsters set up fake profiles. The pictures aren’t them, and their life stories aren’t real. And they’re doing the same thing to many people at the same time. What they’re doing is evading scrutiny. They want you to go off-site because if someone else reports them and their profile gets taken down, they can still make contact with you, and you’ll be none the wiser. They just want your money, not your love. And if you don’t have any money, they may ask you to get a loan or to use your bank account. So stay in contact on the dating website for a while. Check the stories people tell you by doing a few simple internet searches. You can do that for their pictures and profiles too. And talk to your family and friends about it. They could help you see through a possible scam. Never give money to someone you haven’t met in person, however heartfelt their story sounds. Have fun, find romance, but stay safe.

Speaker B: That’s the City of London Police, and they recommend that if you believe you might have been chatting online to a fraudster,, you should report it to Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud reporting center, by calling 0300 123 2040 or by visiting www.actionfraud.police.uk. Losing money is only one of the internet harms that might result from online dating. The Sunday Times has revealed that police have investigated more than 30 child rapes and 60 cases of child sex offenses via online dating services, including kidnapping and violent sexual assault. Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright described the findings as truly shocking and has written to those companies asking what measures they have in place to keep children safe, including verifying their age. And he’s warning them that if he is not satisfied with their response, he reserves the right to take further action. After all of those warnings, you decide that it might be better just to endure the loneliness. Then relationship advisor Trelawney Kerrigan has some tips about how to proceed. She advises major traditional dating sites including matchmakers and avenues which she claims are less risky than Tinder and Grindr.

Speaker D: Okay, so I work as a relationship advisor and I’m a consultant to the Dating Options group, and part of my role is helping to ensure standards across the business that do safeguard single men and women that join. And a lot of the time, obviously, we are asking them to sign up to certain codes of behaviors, but also what we’re doing is everybody is interviewed by an experienced membership advisor, and there is a system in place in terms of we’re able to check that the person lives at the address that they say they live at. We see copies of passports, driving licenses, that kind of thing. So, and we’re also able to check out for major financial crimes. So what we’re doing as far as we possibly can is saying this person is who they say they are, but we’re also asking our members to make sure that once they’re in a situation where they’re off on their own and, you know, talking and deciding whether they want to meet, that they are considering all the kind of basic levels of safeguarding themselves.

Speaker B: Obviously, these sorts of dating options, the dating apps, etc., etc., they allow somebody who is, say, a confidence trickster to find and identify victims. How on earth do you screen someone like that out? Because those people are, by their very nature, very convincing.

Speaker D: Well, for a start, they’re probably less likely to decide to join an agency where they are going to be vetted and interviewed. And obviously it’s a service that people pay for. So, I mean, we have had in the past when we’ve done a background check several cases where, you know, we can see very quickly that there’s a criminal record or an issue with behavior. So we are able to very much give reassurance that this person is who they say they are.

Speaker B: Surely the beginning of the internet was that it allowed you to be someone else, so that there were all of these people who are on Second Life who were actually being somebody that they weren’t. In a sense, though, what you’re saying is you don’t want that.

Speaker D: Well, I mean, if you want to be somebody else, if you want escapism, if you want to play a computer game, or, you know, if you want to be an actor or actress, however way you want to be somebody else and escape from your reality, that’s absolutely fine. But you can’t sell yourself as that person to somebody who wants a serious relationship with you. You know, that’s two very different things, isn’t it?

Speaker B: Yeah, but it was interesting that there were a couple who were in Second Life who actually did get married and their physical reality bore no relationship to their virtual reality.

Speaker D: Well, I mean, again, if that’s somebody’s thing, you know, if you don’t mind going to a site where people are pretending to be other people and you’re happy to meet somebody there, you know, that’s completely your choice, but it’s not You know, the service that the Dating Options group offers for single people, you know, is something very different. So you could say that’s the beauty of the internet. You can, you can do all of these different things if you want to, but when it actually comes down to it, if you’re looking for love and you want somebody who is very genuine and is who they say they are, who, which, you know, I believe most people are looking for that in terms of long-term commitment, there are alternatives and That’s what Dating Options offers, but, you know, each to their own in terms of how people want to meet others and what kind of levels of honesty they demand.

Speaker B: Okay. Do you think the internet makes us lonely?

Speaker D: Depending on how you use it, yes. I think it, you know, it’s one of those things. I mean, people used to think that television was a bad thing. People used to think that rock and roll was bad. It’s all about moderation, and there are great benefits to the internet. It can link communities, it can bring knowledge. We’ve got knowledge at the, you know, at the touch of a button. But at the same time, it can’t replace— and I think this is probably kind of summing up all of the questions you’ve asked me— it can’t replace genuine human connection.

Speaker B: After this, you can hear DJ Ritu with A World in London. Thanks to all of you who contributed to the annual Resonance FM fundraiser. Your generosity helps us to keep our station free and independent from advertising and sponsors, so please keep on donating. Now, we’ve heard that online dating can put us at risk from criminals, yet millions of people use these apps and sites every day, and only a small minority end up being ripped off financially. Emotionally, they offer great value, according to love coach and psychotherapist Eric Hegman. He would say that because he’s a consultant to Parship, the matchmaking website that now owns eHarmony. Parship’s advertising slogan says that every 11 minutes someone falls in love thanks to its services. So they’re staying ahead of the fraudsters. Love. Trumps All. Eric Hegman told me the secrets of its success.

Speaker I: Today we are online 24/7 thanks to our smartphones, and it would be a tragedy if we couldn’t connect with people while we are there. But of course there is a downside. Although there is no such thing as the perfect partner, these dating platforms not only promise to deliver a match, but guarantee the best possible match, and preferably minus the frustration, because frustrated customers don’t pay the bills. The single should feel certain that a partnership could function with the potential matches that are being recommended. The single should also feel as certain as possible of not experiencing experiencing rejection. So it’s all about security. But the most important thing about love is it’s not for sure. So people are distracted between their hopes and wishes in a virtual world and a reality that just isn’t as fascinating and fancy and perfect as the promises they get online. So that’s frustrating for some and really painful for others.

Speaker B: Now, you work as a love coach. What do you find to be the main reasons why people are unwillingly single and lonely?

Speaker I: As a counselor for couples, I know firsthand just how stressed and overwhelmed people often feel while trying to maintain a relationship that is built on equality, respect, and mutual understanding. And in my experience as a singles coach, I encounter an even greater number of individuals who are totally overwhelmed by just seeking a partner. You know, in the past there were so-called marriages of convenience. Couples joined, or were joined, in the hopes of benefiting from certain advantages and for reasons of security. —for example, a son and heir, social status, providing for old age. Love may have been a many-splendoured thing, but it was secondary and even taboo in many societies where love was considered security risk number one in a marriage. And today, of all things, love is supposed to give us a feeling of security. We want a relationship to make us feel safe. And to achieve this, we need nothing less than the perfect partner, a match made in heaven for lifelong passion. Esther Perel once said, “So we meet one single person and expect them to give us something that we once needed a whole village full of people to get.” We want everything with the chosen one, and we want that to last forever. Wrapped up in one neat package. And when the bar is set so high, the decision in itself is overwhelming and particularly difficult, and it breeds fear. People are afraid to mess up. The fear of making the wrong choice often leads to making no choice at all and staying alone.

Speaker B: What are the advantages and disadvantages of using geolocation apps? Things like Tinder to find partners for sex.

Speaker I: Well, 10 years ago, most women wouldn’t even show themselves on a dating site with a picture. Today, they are also showing where they are this very moment. A lot has changed which can be used for advantage. My concern isn’t that much about security of your location but about the experiences you make with rejection. Because people really date a lot now, and every date gone wrong means they have made a poor choice, they have failed. And when yet another attempt at partnership is terminated after 3 months of dating, we have built our relationship house on sand, we have failed. And each time we fail, our self-esteem suffers another blow. And what happens then? People run for cover and put on their armour of self-defence, which is expressed as fear of commitment and fear of loss. So proclaiming “I can’t commit” is a protective strategy similar to professing “I’ll never be able to trust again.” And although these very typical responses serve a short-term purpose, Once ingrained, they are pure poison and ultimately, for many singles today, sabotage their finding a partner. And that is something Tinder and Grindr have to think about.

Speaker B: How do dating sites use technology? Do they use artificial intelligence to match users with similar partners?

Speaker I: Does that actually work? I guess the future will tell. At this moment, probably hundreds of geniuses are trying to create that artificial intelligence that will match singles perfectly. But there is one little thing with every matchmaking: the matchmaker seems often to know better what’s a perfect match than the single himself. But at least in Western civilizations where love is the reason for marriage and not the parents’ decision, we want to be in control. So, yes, there will be an artificial intelligence that matches people, sure thing. But it never will be completely trustworthy. Whether the same thing is right with matchmaking for sexual encounters, I don’t know. Maybe a one-night stand can be perfectly matched by an AI, but probably and hopefully not a marriage.

Speaker B: You work as an expert consultant for Parship. That’s a very successful online dating site. What’s the secret behind its business model?

Speaker I: How has it become so huge? Parship, like eHarmony, which by the way is now a part of Parship, was the first to match singles by scientific research. Of course, Parship doesn’t know whether the two matches fall in love, but it can foresee whether they would be a great team in a relationship. And while the internet was getting more and more graphic with pictures and show-offs, Parship focused on the personality. And in the end, that is what really matters when beauty fades. And that’s nature’s law: beauty always fades. So the success of Parship is the matching and the choice to look behind a fit body and a great job.

Speaker B: Okay, so what about your own personal life? How do you use technology to stay connected and deal with loneliness?

Speaker I: I’m married and I’m with my partner together now for nearly 16 years. We do use technology to a great extent. Sometimes it’s a wonderful way to stay connected, and sometimes it’s disconnecting us when we both check our emails last thing before we go to sleep.

Speaker B: I think we are typical couple. Eric Hegman, those using the technology do have to bear in mind that love will come at a price. The average cost for online dating in the UK is between £240 and £400 a year. It’s not cheap, and it carries risks. So some people prefer instead to allow tech to create their perfect partners and love scenarios. Virtual reality pornography already accounts for 60% of all global VR use according to a survey by vrporn.com. So once again, to quote Mandy Rice Davis, that famous lady of easy virtue from the 1960s, they would say that, wouldn’t they? Watching steamy videos through a VR headset is an immersive experience., and for extra pleasure, you can wear a special suit equipped with electrical stimulators. Couples can partner in a different part of the world and then use this kit for long-distance sexual experiences. And of course, it’s also suitable for singles to enjoy on their own. Robot dolls with artificial intelligence are also available for rent or sale. Some of the most technologically advanced start in Japan, where there is a long tradition of sex dolls known as Dutch wives. It dates back to the 17th century when sailors from the Netherlands arrived in Japan and brought their own personal life-size leather dolls as wife substitutes. The practice became popular in Japanese societies, and there is even a special cemetery founded in 1631 where worn-out dolls are disposed of in a Buddhist funeral twice a year. No, we did not Google that. This is all documented in David Levy’s 2008 book Sex and Love with Robots. He believes technology will save us from loneliness, even though some people will not be able to suspend disbelief when they are making love to a mechanical contraption.

Speaker J: I believe that is going to be true for people who understand the technology, because they will be thinking to themselves, oh, I know how that’s done, and it will take away some of the magic and pleasure of the experience. But I think for the vast majority of society, that won’t be a problem. And I’ve always said, and I firmly believe, that the greatest benefit of sex robots is what they can do for people people who are lonely, people who have no one to love, people who have no one who loves them, and people who can’t form a good lasting relationship that satisfies them. For such people, I think these robots will be a huge boon to their lives and enhance their life quality enormously.

Speaker B: I mean, just to follow through on that line, one of the things about sex is that actually part of its unpredictability. There is something a little boring about having your fantasies enacted out, especially if you don’t have very much imagination.

Speaker J: Well, that’s true, but remember that it’s possible to program some randomness and variation into almost any kind of application. And so the, you know, the robots that we are talking about will be programmed to do things differently, slightly differently from time to time, to create some variety in their by creating some additional interest for their partners.

Speaker B: Right, okay. The concept of randomness does generate some interesting ideas. There could be a surprise or two in store for somebody.

Speaker J: There could be, but you know, there’ll be suitable protective measures in place to make sure that no damage is going to be done so long as the programming is done properly.

Speaker B: Do you think that this is an advan— I mean, John Stuart Mill in his book On Nature, or his pamphlet On Nature, said that anything— because man was a natural creature, so therefore anything that he develops is natural. So therefore, is this basically not artificial sex? This is natural sex according to John Stuart Mill’s proposal.

Speaker J: I wouldn’t agree with that definition in the case of sex and anything else connected with the emotions.

Speaker B: Right, okay. So this is artificial sex then?

Speaker J: Because it is, it is. But if it— if the quality of the experience is as good or better than the experience one has with a human, then obviously it will be enjoyable.

Speaker B: Do you think though that this is just really an acceptance of failure? That what we’re doing is we’re saying We’re so terrible about solving our own problems as human beings. We’ve become absolutely dependent on technology to feed us, and now we’re going to technology to make us feel less lonely.

Speaker J: Well, for some people that will certainly be true. I mean, some of the lonely people I referred to earlier would undoubtedly find it impossible to develop good relationships on their own, and for them the advent of these robots is, is almost essential if they’re suspect their lives is going to improve in quality.

Speaker B: The professor of robotics at MIT, she says that this is all very, very dangerous. And she says that really what should happen is that robots should be developed that don’t look anything like people because there is this problem of anthropomorphization that occurs where lots of people, you know, for ages they’ve said, oh, this doesn’t work. And so they kick it. And then maybe it does work, or people think that their computers deliberately slow down to frustrate them. So we’ve often thought that technology has some sort of being in it. Do you not think that this is dangerous? It creates false ideas about what is real and what isn’t.

Speaker J: It’s possible to some extent that it does create false ideas, but if the experience is an enjoyable one, if the experience is very similar and as good or better than the experiences one has with humans, or if one doesn’t have any experience with humans at all, so it’s inevitably going to be better, then what’s wrong with it?

Speaker B: Okay, but there seems to be a bit of a disaffection that’s going on at the moment. In a sense, you could say that that was probably inevitable. We’ve had over 20 years of the internet. The internet, a lot of people have been accusing of being very, very remote. It makes people more remote, it makes them go into cyberspace, it makes them look at their mobile phones all of the time. We’re not interrelating any longer. Do you think that this is something that is going to see that inevitable process that you wrote about perhaps not occurring?

Speaker J: Yes, it will bring about changes in society, but then almost all technological advances and advances in other aspects of engineering bring about changes in society. I mean, look what happened when motor cars were first invented. It brought about huge changes in society, one of which was that couples who had nowhere to go for privacy could use their parents’ car when they wanted to be alone, you know, for intimacy. So that was 100— more than 100 years ago.— it’s a good example of how something like a car, which has got nothing to do with a computer, can actually benefit one’s sex life.

Speaker B: And there does seem to be something of a new pursuit for spirituality. It’s almost as though the machine is leaving a lot of people cold in some of the senses that we’ve already talked about, that people are actually looking for something outside of the machine.

Speaker J: Is that an opinion that you share? Yes, definitely. I mean, for a lot of people, the machine will not be the answer. People who already have relationships that are enormously rewarding and satisfactory might well not feel any need at all to even try out one of these robots. But as I say, there are millions of people in the world who will find them very beneficial.

Speaker B: Do you not think that this is some sort of strange absorption that is going on between us and machines. Some people have suggested about the development of the cyborg. This is almost an attempt to fuse us with the cyborg by using an elemental human process.

Speaker J: To some extent, yes. But again, you know, if it’s something that people enjoy but which previously they were lacking, then it enhances their lives.

Speaker B: So what’s the harm? I see, so it’s a sort of a washing machine for sex.

Speaker J: Yeah, yeah, why not? I mean, you know, there are machines for everything.

Speaker B: That’s David Levy in an extract from The Password Archive, insisting that a robot lover is better than none at all. Indeed, his book predicts that in the near future, people will marry their robots and experience feelings of love and devotion as well as sexual pleasure in these relationships. Research is continuing into how people feel about partners that are not human. A recent survey found that 40% of those questioned would not regard it as infidelity if their wife or husband had sex with a robot. They are things after all. There is no danger that, like the fictional frog kissed by a princess that by receiving the love of a special human they will somehow become real. At the University of Portsmouth, Dr. Trudy Barber and her students are exploring the cultural significance of sex on the internet and a range of fetishes. She presented her findings at our artificial intelligence conference in London and explained to Passwords Jane Wyatt how the research is progressing.

Speaker C: I’ve been looking at sex with robots for a very, very long time. Not just robots, but with sort of artificial spaces and experiences in artificial spaces. So right back to sort of the early ’90s, late ’80s, early ’90s, I looked at virtual reality and I looked at sexual behavior in virtual reality. I created one of the UK’s first virtual sex environments and I was interested in the type of people that wanted to experience these virtual environments, which were the sexual subcultures such as the fetish scene, which was coming out of very early club cultures in the ’80s. And then I found groups of people that were really interested in some of the work I was doing and volunteered to be part of my research. So I was very lucky enough to do my PhD at the University of Kent looking at what I call Computer Fetishism and Sexual Futurology, exploring the impact of arousal on technologies of cyberspace. And I interviewed about 10 people about their sexual proclivities and how new technologies actually influence their sexual behavior. And what have you found from all this research? I have found that when you’re engaging in this technology, when people are creating things, they become very excited about, say, going on the internet in the early ’90s, mid-’90s. The internet was coming into the home. People were getting online and they were like, they could buy stuff that maybe they wouldn’t be able to before. And they were creating their own kind of bodily attachments and connections to the internet through their bodies as well. And to me it was like, wow, these people, they’re modders, they’re modders of their technology, but they’re And I could see that they were kind of sexual deviants, or what would be sort of termed sexual deviant, but it became like a positive deviance because they were developing new forms of connection, being very creative, creating different types of body connection, and raising all sorts of interesting questions to do with where is our body, where is our sense of self, what is the mind-body problem? It’s a problem. You know, there’s new developments all the time, and I see my students at the University of Portsmouth, you know, coming up with these great ideas and being involved in things like the Sex Tech Hackathon at Goldsmiths University. And just the sheer innovation of using technology, maybe for something naughty to start with, that can suddenly be developed for something else is absolutely fantastic. So you have the side of where people say, look, you go on the internet, there’s child pornography and all the rest of it, is absolutely devastating and awful. But on the flip side, there’s these opportunities for innovation that we need to take seriously as well.

Speaker B: Dr. Trudy Barber, as she says, technology allows us to live out our fantasies. Those lawmakers who would save us from internet harms should appreciate that there are better instruments than laws and covert surveillance to do that job. Some examples would be virtual private networks, parental controls, spam-fighting software, the off switch, and good old common sense. The internet has always been a space where we have broken taboos, exercised freedoms of expression, and challenged authority. We can transcend our body’s limitations and just have fun. The technology does not judge us but responds to our commands and allows us to connect with other beings beyond the flesh. The golden rule, though, does appear to be: it’s all to do with how you use it. Abuse is always something that people decide to do. Technology, like fire, is a bad master but a good servant. This was brought home to me in a way that touched me deeply when I talked to Robert Steen on the line from Norway. His son Mats died young of a muscle wasting disease after spending the last 10 years of his life in a wheelchair.

Speaker E: At his funeral, it turned up a lot of people which I had no idea who was or where they came from, and then it proved that they came from all over Europe and they knew my son Mats without actually having met him physically. And this was kind of an eye-opener for me as for the kind of friendships, relationships, love relationships that can be built in the digital world. And from that, as a starting point, I started to dig into what kind of environment, what kind of life he had really been living in front of his computer and his screen. So that’s in a way where it started. And so, so what did you find out then? What was this life that he was living that meant so much to so many other people? Well, since this is now 4, 4 and a half years ago, it has been, as I said, a very much of an eye-opener. First and foremost, I met with a woman. Her name was Anne. She lives in Salisbury, outside of London. At the time when I met her at my son’s funeral, she was 62 years old. She was a psychologist, she was an entrepreneur, and she worked as a headhunter in the European Union. She was a gamer and a close friend of my son, who at that time was age 25. And she said to me that if you are the kind of adult which I suspect that you are, and which most people are, you might want to know a little bit more tell me more about the life that your son has been a part of. And then she sat down with me for some hours and took me through what they experienced in this gaming world, which is called World of Warcraft, together. And she said that most of the time we are in a kind of traditional social relationship. It is not about killing each other. It’s not so much about the gaming or the competition as you might believe or think. It is mostly about social relationship. We meet, we talk, we eat turtle soup together, we run around lakes, we have competition, or we just tease each other. So very much the same thing as we experience in the physical world. But there is one big difference, she told me, and that is your physical appearance doesn’t doesn’t play any role at all because we can’t see each other, which means that the color of your skin has absolutely no importance. Your makeup doesn’t matter. Your clothes are not visible. So over a long period of time, and we spent between 15,000 and 20,000 hours together over a 10-year period, and when you come into a relationship with a person over such a long period of time, the only thing that remains is what you have in your heart and what you have in your head.. So for me, she said, being 62 years old from Salisbury, for me this is purer relationships and purer friendships than the ones I experience in the physical world. And of course this is very important for your son too, wasn’t it? Because he didn’t have that mobility in the physical world to run around the lake. That is true, and I think that that was in a way a blessing in disguise because my son was born with a muscle disease which we discovered when he was 4. This muscle disease is pretty well described, so we knew more or less how his life was going to develop over the next 20 years, which is both kind of terrifying but also good as for putting the practical things in place so that he can live a good life based on his pre-assumptions. So I think we were kind of illiberal when he decided to spend so much time in front of his computer in this gaming world. If he didn’t have this disease, we would probably have taken the traditional approach approach and taken his time away from the computer. We would have been worried about all this gaming, about all the time spent in front of the computer. We would have limited that. We would have given him an hour or two a day which he was allowed to play and so on and so forth, like most other parents and adults are doing. So as I said, kind of a blessing in disguise there. What we experienced is that he had something to spend his time on when he, the last 10 years of his life, was more or less bound to his apartment and couldn’t go out with the rest of us. And we thought that this was a good way of occupying his mind. It was kind of a leisure activity which he could do, but we didn’t see beyond that. We didn’t see the real kind of relationships and how he could also set his footprint in the world and actually mean things for others. Anne told me that they also had a guy from Newcastle in this network who was bullied with at the train station when he came home from work. He was aged around 40 or something, and this is something which he was so ashamed of that he didn’t share it with anyone else than Mats. And Mats, being 15 years younger than him, talked through with him all of the challenges that he had in his daily life and really helped him out of a very traumatic kind of situation. And from all of these stories, which we learned after Mats had passed away, we learned that he didn’t only experience relationships, friendships, being in love, but also actually to be an important part in forming other people’s happiness and lives. And all of these things were the fears that we had as parents when we got this message that we would have a son with very limited possibilities of moving. But having said that, this is not the main element of the story. The main element of the story is more about we being the adults and the parents not understanding the real importance of gaming, like our parents didn’t understand the meaning and importance of punk and rock and roll in the ’70s and the ’80s. And you were completely and utterly unaware of this alternative life, and I’m reading here that In this gaming world, he was Iblin, a nobleman by birth, a philanderer and a detective. I mean, sounds like quite a lot of fun, doesn’t it? That’s true. I was of course very much aware of Iblin. I was aware of his avatar and how he played this figure, a muscular big guy who was also pretty good looking. He had a ponytail from which Mats was also given a nickname. He was called the Fox from this. Character. I was sitting behind my son for hours and hours watching the screen, and this is what I have in a way wondered a lot about afterwards, after he passed away. How could I sit there and watch and observe and still not understand? And I think the answer to that question is actually that I was an observer, a bystander to my son’s life. I was not a participant. If he had gone to the football field or done some other physical activities, I would probably have participated. I would have been there. I would have met his football friends. I would have met their parents, and I would have interacted and become a part of his life. In the digital gaming world, we do not do the same towards our children, our youngsters. We do not participate. At best, we are observers. And I think this is the learning and the reason for why so many people have reacted so strongly in this story. It is an emotional story, but first and foremost, I think it is a strong message to us as adults as for until we really have participated into this world and met the people in the digital world, in the gaming world that our youngsters actually meet, we do not really know what is going on there. And too fast we go to the judgmental phase and we say that this is not good for you and we want to take you away from the computer. And we don’t have the real basis and insight to actually come to that conclusion.

Speaker B: Robert Stein. So, does technology make us lonely? Maybe. Does it offer companionship and connections to lonely people? Definitely. Will the password team be invited to the first wedding of a human to a robot? And what will the dress code be? On that We’ll have to wait and see. I’m Peter Warren, and this edition of Password was written by Jane Wyatt and produced by Blue Buffery. We’ll be back next month on Resonance FM with more on the ramifications of technology. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

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