Humans vs. Robots

I received a comment on my previous post from the Street Philosopher, who you can always rely on to give some good philosophical points on the everyday workings of life. I checked out his blog for the first time in a while, and the first post really got me thinking. He talks about a new education scheme called PEBBLES (check out his post for more information), which is a form of home schooling for people who cannot attend regular schools. He then goes on to talk about human interaction, and how essential it is to our lives. I thoroughly agree with this. It still amazes me how easy it is nowadays to go through life with very limited actual human meetings...You can buy all your groceries online, you can borrow books from libraries, buy or rent movies, attend an online university with things like the Open University over here in the UK, get all your news updates on the web..One could quite easily go through life living alone with hardly ever having to talk to another human being. As Street philosopher points out however, there is nothing better than a hug when you're feeling a bit down, or sitting down to a meal with either family or friends around a table as supposed to in front of the television. Now don't get me wrong, in my house, we quite often sit in the living with our meals, but I do enjoy sitting around the table and actually talking to each other. Also, sometimes there is nothing better than curling up on the sofa watching a good movie, or even going to the movie theatre, for a bit of pure escapism from the busy hectic world that is our lives, but my favourite part about that escapism is discussing the movies afterwards with my friends.

So, what I'm trying to say is, although the modern world of technology is great for some things, I really hope the art of actual conversation, and real human interaction does not get superseded by machines and robots...I'd miss hugs too much!