Don't touch that tech

I grew up in a culture in which there was no hugging.  No touching.  As kids, we couldn't even brush against grandma until she was all done with lunch.

Many decades ago, when I was in middle or high school, a short story in the Tamil weekly, Ananda Vikatan, was about a father visiting with his son in the city and then the son accompanying the father to the railway station.  

The father boards the train that will take him back to his village and sits by the window while the son stands on the platform by that same window.  During the conversation, which itself was not a freely-flowing one and rather awkward, the son places his arm on the window and it accidentally grazes the father's hand. The son feels goosebumps all over and he realizes that it has been years since his childhood days when he even touched his father.

No hugs and touches, but people spent time with their relatives (mostly) and friends.  A lot of time.  The inability to be in the presence of their favorites during this pandemic has caused quite some stress in the old country.  After ten months, my aunt couldn't take it anymore and she visited with my parents.  As always, there was no hugging or touching and they sat at a distance from each other.

Video chats didn't do them any good.  I can relate to that.

But, I fear that those of us who place a premium on visiting with our friends and relatives are in the minority.  The world seems to have fully embraced (no pun intended) video chats of different kinds.

Those in the hugging culture--like here--miss hugging their siblings and parents and grandkids.  Will technology develop a hug app?  Would you like to have such an app?  Be careful what you wish for:

There are real consequences to letting technology intervene with social touch. Do you fear the day when you attempt to console your child only to have her turn to a device that can comfort her in a way you couldn’t even conceive of? Perhaps you should. With the rise of touch-replacement technology, socially distanced lives could become permanent, and we might end up with even greater levels of isolation than today.

The more we adopt such technologies, the more we risk getting isolated and feeling lonely.

In contexts like this, I am always reminded of the science fiction from a century ago, about which I have blogged before: E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops.

We live in a world that Forster wrote about back in 1909.  Imagine that--in 1909!  Screen time of all kinds just as Forster had feared.  We have replaced real human interactions with virtual ones.  So "satisfied" we are with the virtual interactions, and thinking that the virtual even eliminates the need for real interactions, we seem to believe that visiting with parents, children, friends, is not needed anymore.

Forster channels his warnings through the son telling his mother in that fictional work:

"You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other.  "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind."

After the pandemic ends, or at least eases, I will pay a visit to the old country, and meet face to face with my relatives and friends.  The older folk won't hug.  We will sit apart, and inquire about each others lives.  It will be a touching visit.