Productive Love: A New Approach for Designing Affective Technology
| Submitted by | Ramon Solves Pujol |
| Affiliation | Tokyo Institute of Technology |
| All authors | Solves Pujol, R., Umemuro, H. |
| Keywords | Productive Love, affective technology, care, respect, responsibility, knowledge, lovers, family. |
| Paper link |
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| Submitted | 2009-01-07 19:16 |
| Last edited | 2009-01-24 09:50 |
| Submission history | Minor corrections of English grammar have been done on the paper |
Abstract
The importance of love is reflected in literature, movies and music, therefore it seems necessary to understand what role technology plays in relation to love and the roles it could to play in the future. We review studies related to love in HCI and we identify a lack of consideration of philosophy as a background for love understanding. Based on literature review, we offer a proposal of guidelines for designing technology that aims to improve loving relationships. Besides, we explore principles of engagement with technology that may be important when designing love-promoting technology. Finally we propose a practical design example.
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This paper brainstorms the question of how to build “love-promoting technology”. The authors present their definition of “love”, primarily in long-term couples. These ideas were highly influenced by Fromm, Marlow, and other twentieth century psychologists. The authors seek to find design principles for computer mediated systems that will enhance and promote certain kinds of “love”, drawing on various techniques from tangible and ambient computing, for instance.
These are interesting questions to consider, but this paper provides few answers. Worse, it suffers from serious conceptual problems. First, the entire definition of “love” is shaky, as is the implicit model of human relationships. Specifically, these theories are highly value laden, and also centered on western, industrialized social systems. Privileging deep, personal (indeed, egocentric) love in a long term couple endorses specific cultural traditions which are neither universal nor beyond question. For instance, in many cultures, love may be based on mutual economic and social needs and perceived responsibilities, rather than personal fulfillment. For example, it is hard to accept that love for one’s children, or care for aged parents, is somehow “not as good” as love of a spouse. I might note that their notion that “realism” is better than “fantasy” flies in the face of universal experience. In short, I would expand their definition of love to include a much wider swath of behaviors and experiences. With respect to the technology, the paper cites a few approaches that unobtrusively increase awareness of others. There techniques do not seem terribly useful, probably because they are so distantly related to real life experience. Partly, this is due to the impersonal nature of contemporary computer interfaces. Web screens and touch panels are poor substitutes for face-to-face and skin-to-skin. Note that anything that requires attention to the computer is directly competing with the attention required for the other important activities—listening, learning to ‘read’ another’s signals, constructing verbal and non-verbal signals. So these computer media may well interfere with the critical goal to “be here now” with another. I would note that some of the technology mentioned is downright creepy. Monitoring the everyday activity of a loved one strikes me as just plain twisted. Overall, this paper is conceptually flawed. Even within its own definitions, it provides only limited guidance for design, and there is good reason to question their goals. |
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There is a lot happening within this paper, most of it, however, is poorly connected and unclear. Love is indeed a philosophically thorny issue and I would absolutely concur with Robert's assessment that the definition put forth here is "shaky" and suffers from cultural relativity.
The paper doesn't explicitly or convincingly demonstrate that there is a need for love producing technology. The assertion that ubiquitous computing has fostered a social climate in which "almost all the people feel more excited for using the latest technology than reading the latest books" is dangerously specious. The design guidelines developed from the synthesis of the authors' philosophical survey and group brainstorming session are confusing and, again, questionably relevant. I understand how it could be possible, for instance, to design technology with "Realism, not Delusion" and/or "Giving, not Exchange and Fairness" in mind, but I ultimately fail to see the importance of WHY I would do so. Once through the murky philosophical survey of love and perplexing design guidelines, the paper does offer some sections worthy of investigation. Their investigation of "previous related works" is interesting, but it fails to effectively apply the "productive love" metric they have developed in the assessment of said artifacts. The strongest part of the paper comes at it's finish with a proposed application that takes random photos of a loved one throughout the day and provides an "objective" look at that person at day's end. It is an interesting concept that might do well to be divorced from the obfuscated 3/4s of the paper that precede it. Some points of revision that might be worth considering to salvage the work that has gone into this paper: - investigating studies of love in the field of HCI that the paper only mentions, but fails to delve into; - arriving at a more robust concept of love that accounts for culturally situated practice; - surveying existing means of communication (phone, chat, text messaging, email, epistles) and their implications on love relationships. - establishing a more effective metric for analyzing the technologies mentioned in the latter part of the paper. |
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Thank you Robert and Adam for your valuable comments,
First, Referring to Robert’s review, I would like to clarify that the paper’s definition of love is not primarily in long-term couple but also embraces other loving relationships such as family orfriends. Therefore we agree that love for children or aged parents is not less valuable, and that mutual economic and social needs “love” are an issue that concerning to social setting, and is far from love as we understand it, therefore it escapes the scope of the paper. It seems that this issue brought an important misunderstanding of the paper, and originated most of the Robert comments on it. We will revise the paper in order to localize possible sources that brought to those misinterpretations. Besides, Concerning to the definition provided, I would like to insist, that the definition is just extracted from consent on philosophers tendency, which because of seeing love as something that can be improved, we considered worth to explore the possibility to use it in order to improve human relationships. We acknowledge that our approach may not be valid for some cultures or sectors of the population, we may not be able to improve everybody’s love, but our idea is that our approach may worked for some. Finally, concerning to the point that the proposed technology is “creepy” “twisted”, we are happy to see that this idea could brew this kind of impression, as we stated at the introduction of the paper, the proposed idea is just a first example that intends to embrace several of the proposed guidelines, as well as aspire to rise constructive disagreement and if it is possible to inspire other more appropriate design approaches. Concerning to Adam’s review. As advised, we will revise the connectedness and clarity of the paper. We agree that the paper does not state that there is a “need for love producing technology”, we do not think that there is a need. However it exists philosopher’s consent that the promotion-approached kind of love is more fulfilling and improves the relationships. Similarly, concerning to importance of the suggested guidelines. We believe that it is not that everybody should design that way in all the cases, but if one agrees with the proposed philosophy, the guidelines are a first approach on how to use it. Finally, the last to points appears very valuable to us, first, that besides the studied technologies, we agree that could survey existing means of communication (phone, chat, text messaging, email, epistles) and their implications on love relationships. And second that we could find a more effective metric to analyze all of them. We will keep it into mind for future improvements on this study. A common point of the two reviewers is that the cited technology does not seem very useful for the purpose of this study. We agree with that observation, moreover it is one of the bases of the paper: we want to show that no much of the already designed technology specifically focuses on love, therefore we believe that there is field to explore, and we offer an original approach to do it. |
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Throughout history, poets, scientists, philosophers, novelists, theologians, you name it - have written more about love than probably any other topic. In 1973, Zack Rubin lamented that despite the amount of writing on love, there has been very little empirical work on the nature of love (see Rubin, 1973, Liking and Loving: An Invitation to Social Psychology). A number of empiricists had risen up to the challenge since then. Intimate, love relationships are now the most commonly and extensively studied types of relationships. The opposition between productive and receptive love, that is cultivated by the authors, is highly suspect and questioned in more recent literature (written in the last 25-30 years). In psychological terms, attachment (or receptive love) and caring (or productive love) are not so different and opposite as might seem if one were to limit understanding of the concepts to philosophical writers of the past centuries. I won't debate the validity of the theoretical framework used by the authors here in detail, but I would like to point the authors to research on love and close/intimate relationships by Rubin, Goode, Perlman and others in interpersonal relationships literature.
I agree with both Adam's and Robert's criticisms of the papers' lack of clarity and convoluted arguments. The paper reads less like a set of coherent arguments and more like several laundry lists of prior works and key concepts. The listing of elements is left without any explanation, as if the authors assume the meaning of "striving for other", "giving" or "selflessness" is self-evident. The very conception that love relationships can be "improved" by technology seems intuitively flawed. I think this is why the technology design proposed in the paper feels at most derivative. It is based on the readings presented in the introduction but seems largely devoid of a connection with the real world and the real love-relationships that may be the target of such technology. I think there is potential in this work to produce interesting insights, however, it is at the very beginning stages and is not ready for presentation yet. |
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Thank you Irina for your 'strict' review,
It makes it clearer for me that the structure of the aper need to be revised. plus that the concepts related to Productive Love, should be explained, we just assumed that those are common words in a dictionary, but it is worth to be checked. I also acknowledge how valuable is to take into account the cited authors approaches. Among them Rubin was revised for this study, Rubin based his theory and "measurement of romantic love" scale in three approaches, where one of them is represented by Fromm's analysis of the components of love which are central for our Productive Love. However because of the reasons described in our paper we choose this approach, hoping that can be useful for some people. Concerning to that the technology design seems derivative, as we mention in the paper, aims just to provide an example of how the proposed guidelines could take form. We are aware that it is not a definite solution that everybody should like it or find it useful. |
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This paper challenges the new realm of HCI: integration of love and technology. Authors reviewed their theoretical foundations such as Erich Fromm and others’ studies. The main concept of this challenge is Productive Love based on Fromm’s theory. Then they extracted main elements for love and proposed novel directions for improving love relationships, and suggested guidelines for designing love-promoting technology. Finally, the paper presents the simple a hypothetical system for love-promoting interaction.
My first impression of this paper is very fresh with questioning authors’ ideas since they seemed to try to overcome big gaps between a matter of ‘quality’ and a matter of ‘quantity’. I absolutely agree with the fact that HCI should try such a kind of challenge and trials should increase because HCI is on the many borders of incompatible fields. The authors’ approach, where they collected many philosophical infrastructures of love and investigated up-to-date applications to it, is actually natural. I can understand their procedures. Even Fromm and others’ theory are very feasible and also authors revised their ideas to adapt them to this research, their idea of Productive Love is too ambiguous to use them for technical applications. Also, Fromm’s love theory is too serious and authors recognized this aspect. However, I think their approaches are still serious and such seriousness might discourage users to use the suggested system. Beside, Fromm and other’s concept on love is limited to the western societies. Constructing more general theories on love and technology, authors should also investigate the theoretical foundations of the eastern societies and others. Or, they should more narrow the theme of love and technology for designing feasible systems. Sometimes lightness can inspire lovers to strengthen their love. Further, in order to design love-promoting systems, psychological and physiological approaches are necessary since they could provide designers with practical guidelines for love-promoting system design. In this paper, these routines are omitted. Proposing a hypothetical system is needed for drawing a blue-print in the barren field of love, affection and technology, but the schema of the system should be not naïve but more concrete. Since such approaches should be continuous in the field of HCI, this paper, I think, is still valuable even though these shortcomings. |
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Some reviewers have criticized the specific focus of western ideals and called for more general scope. I find this to be unrealistic in a single paper and the authors should simply state that they focus only on western ideals in this work.
Reviewers have also mixed messages on intimate love with more general love. I think the paper is pretty clear that family members are key in their interpretation with brief mention of love development between intimate people. No reviewers commented on what I thought to be the appropriate alt.chi part of this work which I considered to be the integration of philosophical work to drive the designs we develop. It is this very topic that was highly relevant in the “demise” of artificial intelligence. That field ignored the relevant philosophical work and pursued avenues that were previously known to philosophers as being highly limited. Reviewers also gave low ratings for relevance to alt.chi. This may be a misinterpretation of the purpose of this rating. Perhaps this filed should be renamed "Topic appropriate for alt.chi" In terms of this work promoting discussion in the mainstream CHI community, I think the larger message here is to consider the masses of previous psychological and philosophical work done in the area of love and use this as a basis for the development of systems to (1) avoid rediscovering problems / reinventing the wheel, and (2) have a related philosophical stance to help develop a critical discourse around specific projects. |
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The paper proposes a vision of technology to promote a specific kind of relationship, which the authors call "productive love." Using a framework drawn from the psychoanalyst and philosopher Erich Fromm as a guide, the authors draw very clear boundaries about healthful love. Advancing a set of explicit guidelines for "love-promoting" technology, the authors review HCI projects and methods relating to the exploration of intimacy and connection between people in close relationships. Finally, there is an exemplar design concept to demonstrate the kind of love-promoting technology envisioned by the authors. Love, obviously, is a complex, nuanced phenomenon -- a central concern of Western epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. I wish this paper took a more subtle view of both love as an experience and of how communication technologies mediate relationships.
As other reviewers have pointed out, "love" is a highly variable concept -- varying in sensation and expression. My critique rests instead on the contention that the paper really addresses philosophical approaches to love. As far as I can tell (also looking at Irina's comments), this is a quick summary, based on Fromm's perspective, of some psychological concepts of love. It's highly misleading to suggest that this is a treatment of the history of "love" in philosophy, or to suggest that somehow there is general agreement among philosophers on the superiority of "productive love" over other definitions and concerns. I'm not necessarily opposed to using a summary of Fromm's psychoanalytic account of "productive love" to argue that relationships designers should value certain kinds of actions and emotions. I do think, however, that the decision to do so requires more justification than asserting that there is a "common focal point" (p2) of agreement about love any field (psychology or philosophy). Why start with Fromm? Why not handle aspects of agape, eros, or philia? How would Fromm feel about designing technology to persuade people to have certain kinds of human relationships -- would that be a form of promoting conformity? This paper takes a fairly polemic view about how people should care for each other -- which makes the tone interesting for alt.chi but is also a hard balancing act for literature summaries. If I understand correctly, the author is rejecting an empirical engagement with research participants and their experience of love as a basis for design intervention because "common people usually may not understand love in such a deep way as philosophers do." (p7) The implication is that these people's understanding of love "could be improved" (p7) -- that designers of technologies for relationship formation should not attempt to enhance how people find meaning, but rather should use technology to alter existing relationships to fit a set of abstract values. Perhaps I have misread the argument, but this assertion of a psychoanalytic theory (and one brainstorming session!) as a basis for design is, to put it mildly, provocative. Following up on what Azam wrote earlier, I do think the "integration" of philosophy has been a productive area for research (ie Agre's phenomenological perspective on AI, or the use of Heidegger by Winograd and Flores). I think this paper really needs a more subtle and in-depth discussion of the relationship between engagement with potential users of a prototype "love promoting" system and the theoretical stances which are motivating the design decisions. One space, I think for this type of discussion could be a deeper look at some of the ambivalences and complexities of previous research. Having read much of the research myself (I am cited in this paper), I think what's most compelling about many of the projects is not the types of data used but the ambivalences and uncertainties their use surfaces about the relationship between communication and relationship perception. In the end, the final design proposal seems reasonable -- but much like many of the earlier projects reviewed in pp6-7. Without illustrations, scenarios, or system diagrams I am somewhat unclear about as to how it would work. |
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