No man is an island
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Social support is vital to human health. In daily life, intimate relations and a rich social life are amongst the most important contributors to personal health and well-being. To be more specific: a low degree social interaction has been shown to be as high a risk factor for early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Here, we will discuss how technology may change, augment and potentially even replace face to face social interaction - now and in the future, for better or for worse. [Presented at Social Support TAT: Theory, Applications, and Technology. Workshop 16 Mar 2015 through 20 Mar 2015. Venue: Lorentz Center @ Oort]
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No man is an island
- 2. No Man Is An Island Robin van Emden @ Lorentz Center 2015 brainstorm: how technology might help reduce social isolation
- 3. Robin van Emden MSc Psychology 10+ Years ICT & Tech
- 5. More digital, less face to face (Aric Sigman, 2009).
- 6. Importance of a warm touch • Touch can affect multiple neurobiological systems that are targets of anti-depressants and anxiolytic medications as well. • A touch after a stressful event or the experience of a triggering event can speed the reduction of cortisol levels • Soothing, safe touch can be an effective means to provide an experience of safety and evoke the relaxation response • In parents, it touch been shown to increase the quality of their relationship, infant-parent synchrony, perception of partner support and it seems to reduce the effects of post-partum depression.
- 8. NO MAN IS AN ISLAND
- 18. Pillow Talk
- 20. THE ROBOTS ARE COMING
- 23. dakimakura
- 30. Smart adaptive analytics engine / API
Editor's Notes
- Ok, rather a lot of information in a short time, but I hope this will really help us think of new, different, creative and simple uses Of social technology
- Hi , My name is Robin van Emden I have an MSc in cognitive and economic psychology, And 10 years experience in commercial software development Since a few months I am also a part-time PhD student in Digital Social Thermoregulation I am working on this PhD at the Amsterdam Emotion Regulation Lab AT THE VU Where my supervisors are Hans IJzerman, Sander Koole and Siegwart Lindenberg.
- Now Digital Social Thermoregulation , Is rather a mouthful, But you might say that I am working on new applications of digitally mediated touch That is, I explore devices that enable you to convey a warm, social touch over a distance. With the intention of seeing how these devices might be used in a therapeutic setting
- That this might be an important subject, can be derived from, amongst many other things, this graph It shows you that in US, starting in 1987, Social and digital media use Seems to be replacing face to face communication Which might not be all that problematic when you would not be missing out much When you’d limit yourself to digital communication. Yet there is a lot of research which seems to indicate that social touch May be rather important in the regulation of our social relationships, our emotions and our health
- Just to give some examples from the research literature: Touch can affect multiple neurobiological systems Which are also, and not coincidently, targets of anti-depressants and anxiolytic medications. A touch after a stressful event can speed the reduction of cortisol levels And a soothing, safe touch can be an effective means to provide an experience of safety In young parents touch has been shown to increase general relationship quality Increase infant-parent synchrony Increase perception of partner support and reduce the effects of post-partum depression.
- All CLUES that a social touch may have important effects on our general physical and psychological health. As such, it is probably one of several important pathways which convey the health effects of a rich social life We will probably hear much more about this during this workshop But as a first indication of the importance of social interactions It is good to remember that a low degree social interaction is as high a risk factor for early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day Or being an alcoholic
- So, No man is an island entire of itself as the English poet John Donne already stated
- Now even though no man is an island, We can famously get stranded on a deserted one! There you may have shelter against the element, and enough to eat and drink. You may have all you need for a reasonably pleasant life, really, but for one important thing: companionship. Now lets suggest that on this island, you would have access to some electronic devices, might those be enough to stave of loneliness? And if not, what might still be missing?
- Before we continue, it is important to realize that we are all different in, for example in our need for social company, and the way we cope with loneliness. Still, there are very few people that flourish when completely isolated. Just think of Tom Hanks in the movie Cast Away, He stays sane in part by befriending a Wilson volleyball, but becomes separated from his friend during a severe storm. This is one of the saddest scenes in the film including the now classic line, "Wilsonnnn!!!"
- Ok, let’s not get sidelined too much back to our island Would you, for example feel less lonely when you ‘d have a cellphone to your disposal to talk to family and friends?
- Or maybe even a laptop With an internet connection A webcam And skype
- I think these communication tools would help But if you are even a little like me, you may feel that you’d still be lonely _____________________ This might be because the communication through these devices is still mainly verbal There’s no smell, no physical warmth, no sex nobody to help you physically when you are in trouble I guess it might somehow feel as if you were living in a kind of tropical prison you could talk with, and see other people, but never really, physically connect
- So maybe we can add a little something to our existing communication tools, Augment our digital communication
- For example through rudimentary touch Pair and Couple are apps that take that approach They enable partners to share pictures, messages, sketches etcetera No one else can see the content. Now one of their features is particularly interesting for us They offer a so called “thumbkiss” This feature lets couples “kiss” with their fingers by touching the screen If you both tap the same spot on the screen, your phones will vibrate. Seems an interesting feature, but somehow still lacking.
- So maybe apple is onto something With their APPLE WATCHThis enables you to broadcast your heartbeat to a friend or lover I haven’t tried it yet, but it is an intriguing option
- A richer, and more interesting example is for example the Frebble, Made by Holland Haptics, a partner of ours The Frebble is an accessory designed to allow you to hold hands with someone at a distance: when you squeeze it, the other person feels your squeeze I tested one last week, and I must was pleasantly surprised by its effectiveness
- Ok, two last examples, First Pillow talk by Joanna Montgomery A product that aims to connect long distance lovers. when one person goes to bed, their lover’s pillow begins to glow softly to indicate their presence. Placing your head on the pillow allows you to hear the real-time heartbeat of your loved one.
- This inspired me and Lodewijk Evers, One of the participants of this workshop, to create our own version of these pillows, just a little bigger They are based on the Mr Cuddly Pillow seen here on the screen We are currently creating two of these man-size cuddly pillows, adding a small pocket in its head for a smartphone in this way, you can cuddle while talking with your friend or lover
- Now maybe we can skip all the complexities of socializing in the near future, by creating Social robots, to join us on our island These robots might be personalized to our tastes Could be always there for us And would never tire of us
- most of CURRENT work on robots is technologically driven And often designed to work in a medical context For example, the SELEMCA team at the VU works on so-called Caredroids _____ Here you see an example of another type of care robot Now the engineers at this project say that they’d rather Have a warm robot, than a cold nurse Next to their sickbed
- And … I rather doubt that, The creepy robot here illustrates why rather well It is the Japanese “END OF LIFE” robot The idea is that once a dying patient lies down the device is activated At this point, the "doctor" exits the room and the robotic arm begins a back-and-forth soothing, caressing action. If that would be a type of these warm robots, a cold nurse seems quite attractive
- Now if we stay in Japan, I think the Dakimakura Is technologically rather a lot simpler, But it already seems much more pleasant than the previous cold robots A Dakimakura is really A human sized pillow, some of which contain a heating element that can heat the pillow to 32 degrees, that is, more or less human skin temperature
- somewhere In between these two applications is the Paro It is probably the best know care-robot, sort of a therapeutic robot baby seal, intended to be very cute and to have a calming effect on and elicit emotional responses from patients of hospitals and nursing homes, similar to Animal-Assisted Therapy.
- Still, Even the Paro does, to me, seem very inferior when compared to even, for example, This regular cat, Which was allowed in hospital to soothe a dying womanThat leaves us to figure out how, and if, we can (and possibly, ask whether we even should) create better robots and distant communication devices
- MAYBE WE SHOULD TAKE A DIFFERENT PATH Maybe there is another way for technology to help us Not by replacing face to face contact, OR by augmenting digital communication But rather by supporting and strengthening our real life social encounters
- A first example that comes to mind may be the “tinder” app it helps you limit the choice of available partners, and takes away some of the inherent emotional risk in dating. It does this by using geolocation to limit the radius of available matches, That is, it smartly uses your phone gps Sensor data And mixes it with social information
- Using sensors and mixing it with other forms of data to create contextually aware software Is Something we’ll see more and more, In more and more intricate ways as more and more people start to wear sensors Sensors that can register heart-rate, heart-rate variability, skin temperature, movement, sleep patterns, etc
- A first example of an app that makes use of some of this psychophysiological data is PeopleKeeper (PPLKPR) This app syncs with a Bluetooth heart rate monitor to track emotions When the monitor spots a change in heart rate the app alerts the user It asks the user to explain how they're feeling, such as happy or scared Over time, an algorithm learns the difference between different heart rates It then identifies people who cause stress, or who are a calming influence And The app can then even delete contacts it considers to be bad for the wearer
- Now though this app has very bad reviews, and has no scientific foundation, I think it might be very interesting to see if I, or better, we, can develop an smart open social and psychophysiological analytics engine or API This API might receive its data from sensors, from surfing behavior, social data, and other contextual data It would analyze that data using smart statistics, algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence And contextually and continuously adjust, learn and mine data to deliver cues for decisions, health warnings, and more
- One thing that would then be very important is that I think that all of this data should be owned by the users themselves Both from an ethical, and from a scientific point of view Now Intel, Google, Apple and others are all working towards contextual data engines. But they currently take the data from (mostly) closed source devices, analyze it on their servers in the cloud, and show you their analysis, produced by secret algorithms. That means I cannot use their services as a scientist, since I am not able access the raw data. Which means I cannot evaluate what these companies do with my data – also a huge privacy concern. So if you’d ask me what I might need for both my research, and for the development of an open api to succeed, It would be open devices, open actuators and sensors, Open software And ways for users to selectively limit access to personal data All things which ask for technological expertise Also, we would need to learn to separate the signal from the noise, Need to understand which data would be of value under which circumstances, And what kind of digital interventions might enrich peoples lives And when All aspects that ask for scientific and therapeutic input – and good designers
- Ok, rather a lot of information in a short time, but I hope this will really help us think of new, different, creative and simple uses Of social technology
- Thank you – and now over to you :D