Sometimes you just need a hug. And sometimes there’s just no one around to give you one. So what do you do?
Well, MIT Media Lab researcher Melissa Kit Chow has brainstormed a decidedly 21st-century solution to this age-old problem, one that creatively combines Facebook’s “Like” feature with … an inflatable vest. Really.
Chow’s Like-A-Hug inflatable vest includes an interactive link to your Facebook page. Whenever anyone “Likes” something there, a fan in the back of the vest inflates to give you an encouraging “hug.”
Chow’s website describes her invention like this:
Like-A-Hug is a wearable social media vest that allows for hugs to be given via Facebook, bringing us closer despite physical distance. The vest inflates when friends 'Like' a photo, video, or status update on the wearer's wall, thereby allowing us to feel the warmth, encouragement, support, or love that we feel when we receive hugs. Hugs can also be sent back to the original sender by squeezing the vest and deflating it.
Her website goes on to say that the invention was an experiment of sorts in which she and collaborators Andy Payne and Phil Seaton probed the limits of how far Facebook’s user interface might be extended in the physical world, away from a computer screen.
In an interview with bostonmagazine.com, Chow emphasized that Like-A-Hug was as much a thought experiment as something that was seriously intended for the marketplace. “We were interested in ideas of telepresence and how to communicate that through a product. So we came up with this as a way to explore those ideas. It was more like an exercise than anything else.” Chow and her colleagues actually finished work on the project last year, but it’s only just recently captured the attention of several media outlets.
Experiment or not, I think the Like-A-Hug concept begs some significant questions about where we’re at in this cultural moment.
My immediate reaction to reading about the vest was admiration for what a clever, creative idea it was. Another thought quickly followed that one, however. I couldn’t help but wonder if we’re becoming so relationally disconnected as a culture that some folks might actually find the idea of this “virtual” hug device appealing.
Sherry Turkle, who (perhaps not so coincidentally) is a professor at MIT, has long talked about how we as a society seem to turn more and more to technology—”hug” it, if you will—to meet our emotional needs. In her book Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, she chronicles how children will tell their innermost secrets to robotic dogs and how mechanical seal-like creatures are finding their way into nursing homes, providing comfort to the residents. The Like-A-Hug feels like an extension of this phenomenon.
Are we so starved for real relationships with flesh-and-blood friends and relatives that settling for an inflatable substitute seems like a good alternative? Sadly, for at least some people, I wonder if the answer to that question might just be yes.
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