Learning to be human with sociable robots

This essay examines the debate over the status of sociable robots and relational artifacts through the prism of our relationship to television. In their work on human-technology relations, Cynthia Breazeal and Sherry Turkle have staked out starkly different assessments. Breazeal’s work on sociable robots suggests that these technological artifacts will be human helpmates and sociable companions. Sherry Turkle argues that such relational artifacts seduce us into simulated relationships with technological others that largely serve to exploit our emotional vulnerabilities and undermine authentic human relationships. Drawing on an analysis of the television as our first relational artifact and on the AMC television show Humans, this essay argues that in order to intervene in this debate we need a multimediated theory of technology that situates our technical artifacts in the domestic realm and examines their impact on those populations especially impacted by such technologies, including women, children, and the elderly. It is only then that we will be able to take the full measure of the impact of such sociable technologies on our being human.