Psychologist Sherry Turkle asks, ‘Why do people no longer suffice?’*

It’s a great question to ask as we move deeper into the twenty first century.

Turkle has noticed how we conceive robots has moved from doing robots, to thinking robots, to sociable robots.  The first complex robots to hit the market are all sociable: Paro, Jibo, Pepper.

How does our growing acceptance of robots providing Human companionship help us to reflect on being Human?

Donald Miller tells of a therapy week he was part of in which the participants weren’t allowed to tell each other what they did until the final day.

The leader of these weeks shared how the final day always saddened him.  Friendships, forged whilst people didn’t know anything about each other’s jobs, were disrupted when they were able to reveal the reality some made more money or were a little famous or more successful in what they did.

The people who stepped back were those who didn’t earn so much or were not as successful as others – who felt they weren’t enough

Eckhart Tolle wrote something which caught my attention.**  How if I change the way I speak to someone powerful or famous or successful it’s my ego trying to be bigger.

I sometimes catch myself doing just this.  But am I not good enough just to be me?

Technology allows us to filter how others can or cannot get to us.  Robots won’t put us down – unless we programme them to.  But technology can be used in a different way: to show we have always been enough, enabling us to create a society which holds this truth for every person.

I dream for more and more to be woken up to who the are and what they have.   To know and to be content at rest and in motion.

My mission.

You’re welcome to join in.

(*From Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together.)
(**Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.)
(The doodle is of my friend Steve who sends people thank you notes with this pose and “You!  You’re Awesome” across the front.)