Techno humans

In 2018, Britain appointed the world's first minister for loneliness. A recent survey by the US seniors' advocacy group AARP found that loneliness among the over-65s costs the US government almost 7 billion dollars in additional healthcare every year. In Japan, where single people are expected to make up almost 40% of all households by 2040, there is also a growing sense that social isolation is becoming an epidemic. Faced with such figures, as if in a science fiction film, technology is evolving at an overwhelming pace from facial recognition to the detection of human emotions. To what end? The kind say it is to improve our health and wellbeing; the unkind, to take total control of the individual…