On the question of whether robots and machines that listen and sympathize will prove adequate to comfort the human soul.
I recently read of a robot that is selling well, a robot that seems to listen. That such a device would become popular testifies to our desperation to communicate and be heard and be accepted.
The robot poses no threat of rejection or criticism or correction. Lordy, wouldn't that be wonderful? I wonder if that is why writing appeals to me? I have long known my writing would be at risk of totally changing if I expected that anyone would read it in my lifetime. Do I treat the keyboard the way people treat their comforting empathy robot? No doubt my writing is driven to some degree by the need to express and communicate.
How desperately we all want to be heard! How desperately we want to make ourselves, our thoughts and ideas and feelings and experiences, a part of something bigger, a part of someone else's thoughts and experiences. So we talk to people who are not really listening and we pay people to listen to us and now we can buy robots programmed to trick us into believing they are listening.
All the while we just need to listen to each other.
To what lengths can we or should we go to get people to listen? Isn't what we have to say the most important thing in the universe? It certainly is the most important thing in our youniverse.
So people buy listening robots and I type. The response from the machine is far more affirming and encouraging than most human responses, or lack thereof.
Desperate to be heard, we prattle on to the exclusion of ever listening, rendering mutually mute our efforts at communication. Left with bored friends, coworkers, family, and spouses, we can soon add bored robots to the list. Loath to listen, we know our stories must be better than theirs. So the talk goes on, and robot sales go up, and tweets and blogs and Facebook pages profligately propagate.
Never has so much been said and so little heard.