A post-body scenario provokes a number of questions. One important one seems to be the question of physical touch and love. To what extent will there be the wish and the possibility for physical love when our natural bodies will be overcome?

At this point I will not elaborate on the fact that our relation to technological gadgets already has a strong emotional essence, to some extent, it is replacing actual face to face communications between humans even by now. Rather I want to take a serious attempt to outline a specific matter of discussion when thinking about future life-realities: inter”personal” and especially sexual relationships between “man and machine”.

Already there are societies where this topic is on the agenda of everyday life. Japan is the leading nation in building humanoid robots. Unsurprisingly it is also the country where robotic sex dolls are deeply integrated into the culture. There are people (especially men) who prefer a serious relationship with these dolls over a relationship with a human being.

This topic seems to be a significant one since it touches a question as important as how we will reproduce ourselves in the future. Moreover, the feeling of love is one of the most essential experiences to many humans and its possible transformation concerns everyone. The movie Her (2013) conveys a beautiful insight into what it could be like to fall in love with a computer or an operating system, as they call it.


Closely connected to that is the debate on genetic engineering. It does not seem unlikely that parents will soon be able to “design” their perfect baby, whether their design decisions will concern physical or cognitive aspects of the new human being. What consequences will that have on biological evolution? Will there still be biological evolution in the first place or will it be replaced by an insanely accelerating process of mechanical evolution as soon as Singularity is reached?

Hiroshi Ishiguro, professor of Osaka University Department of System Innovation, explains that to him

“It’s very interesting how human beings don’t really understand about ourselves. What is ‘Human’? What do you mean when you say ‘Think’? What are ‘Emotions’? The study of androids can never be done without the pursuit of ‘human-likeness’. Our study is almost equal to questioning ‘What is Human?’ In order to make something that is useful for people, we first need to understand human beings. Androids may not be in practical use right away, but the process of understanding our nature is the most interesting part of the study of androids.” (Video below (1:30)) #philosophy

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