2020

Love and Electronic Affection: A Design Primer brings together thought leadership in romance and affection games to explain the past, present, and possible future of affection play in games. The authors apply a combination of game analysis and design experience in affection play for both digital and analog games. The research and recommendations are intersectional in nature, considering how love and affection in games is a product of both player and designer age, race, class, gender, and more. The book combines game studies with game design to offer a foundation for incorporating affection into playable experiences. The text is organized into two sections. The first section covers the patterns and practice of love and affection in games, explaining the patterns and practice. The second section offers case studies from which designers can learn through example. Love and Electronic Affection: A Design Primer is a resource for exploring how digital relationships are offered and how to convey emotion and depth in a variety of virtual worlds. This book provides: • A catalog of existing digital and analog games for which love and affection are a primary or secondary focus. • A catalog of the uses of affection in games, to add depth and investment in both human-computer and player-to-player engagement. • Perspective on affection game analyses and design, using case studies that consider the relationship of culture and affection as portrayed in games from large scale studios to single author independent games. • Analysis and design recommendations for incorporating affection in games beyond romance, toward parental love, affection between friends, and other relationships. • Analysis of the moral and philosophical considerations for historical and planned development of love and affection in human–computer interaction. • An intersectionality informed set of scholarly perspectives from the Americas, Eurasia, and Oceania.

Cambridge University Press, 2022

This book outlines the environments of loving in contemporary technoculture and explains the changes in the manner of feelings (including the experience of senses, spaces, and temporalities) in technologically mediated relationships. Synchronic and retrospective in its approach, this Element defines affection (romance, companionship, intimacy etc.) in the reality marked by the material and affective 'intangibility' that has emerged from the rise of digitalism and technological advancement. Analysing the (re)constructions of intimacy, it describes our sensual and somatic experiences in conditions where the human body, believed to be extending itself by means of the media and technological devices, is in fact the extension of the media and their technologies. It is a study that outlines shifts and continuums in the 'practices of togetherness' and which critically rereads late modern paradigms of emotional and affective experiences, filling a gap in the existing critical approaches to technological and technologized love. https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/love-in-contemporary-technoculture/074FE883A89E836B494D581E7C74A3AB?fbclid=IwAR29WReMn5UMp0OnjwQi8RtHqlmRHyBWwTwGAbbOlwgon1wRopnbZVOcgtY

The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 2022

An emerging line of research in bioethics questions whether enhanced love is less significant or valuable than otherwise, where 'enhanced love' generally refers to cases where drugs (e.g., oxytocin, etc.) are relied on to maintain romantic relationships. Separate from these debates is a recent body of literature on the philosophy and psychology of 'VR-dating'-viz., where romantic relationships are developed and sustained in a way that is mediated by virtual reality. Interestingly, these discussions have proceeded largely independently from each other. The aim of this paper will be to consider whether and to what extent philosophical arguments levelled against the value of enhanced love in the pharmacological case extend over to cases where loving relationships are technologically mediated via VR rather than pharmacologically mediated. It will be argued that while some worries about the pharmacological case don't extend over in a way that will be particularly problematic for VR, two (of the four arguments considered) are more prima facie serious. I'll conclude by suggesting why even these stronger argument strategies aren't insurmountable, and thus, that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that VR-mediated love can largely withstand variations on the bioconservative critiques that target pharmacologically enhanced love.

This book contains the proceedings of the 12th International Human Choice and Computers (HCC12) Conference, held at MediaCityUK, Salford, Greater Manchester, UK, on September 7–9, 2016. The conference was held by the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Technical Committee 9 (TC9): Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Society. The conference Chairs, David Kreps (Chair of TC9 Working Group 9.5: Virtuality and Society), Gordon Fletcher, Marie Griffiths (Vice-chair WG9.5), and Diane Whitehouse (TC9 Chair), chose the theme for this year’s conference: Technology and Intimacy: Choice or Coercion. Whilst encouraging contributions from across the subject fields of the working groups of TC9, this theme has coalesced into three principle strands of focus: ethics, communication, and futures. The papers selected for this book are based on both academic research and the professional experience of information systems practitioners working in the field. It is the...

Continuum, 2018

This article examines the emergence of digital technologies of intimacy such as Wifi-enabled vibrators. We argue that the emergence of intimate digital technologies constitutes a distinct acceleration towards more invasive forms of commercial surveillance and the commodification of the private body and intimate affect. This argument is supported by an analysis of product design and marketing, in addition to key informant interviews with members of the local (Australian) adult entertainment industry. We conclude by suggesting that this 'droning of intimacy' illuminates the exchange at the heart of our willingness to capitulate to this work of being watched by any contemporary device: promises of efficiency, satisfaction, social connection, and control.

Frontiers in Pscyhology, 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic led to social restrictions that often prevented us from hugging the ones we love. This absence helped some realize just how important these interactions are to our sense of care and connection. Many turned to digitally mediated social interactions to address these absences, but often unsatisfactorily. Some theorists might blame this on the disembodied character of our digital spaces, e.g., that interpersonal touch is excluded from our lives online. However, others continued to find care and connection in their digitally mediated interactions despite not being able to touch. Inspired by such contrasting cases, we ask if 'digital hugs' can work? We use the Mixed Reality Interaction Matrix to examine hugging as a social practice. This leads us to several claims about the nature of our embodied social interactions and their digital mediation: (1) all social interaction is mediated; (2) all virtual experiences are embodied; (3) technology has become richer and more supportive of embodiment; and (4) expertise plays a role. These claims help make the case that quality social connections online are substantially dependent upon the dynamic skilful resourcing of multiple mediating components, what we term digital tact. By introducing and developing this concept, we hope to contribute to a better understanding of our digital embodied sociality and the possibilities for caring connections online.

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 2015

Philosophy of Love in the Past, Present, and Future, 2022

How might emerging and future technologies—sex robots, love drugs, anti-love drugs, or algorithms to track, quantify, and ‘gamify’ romantic relationships—change how we understand and value love? We canvass some of the main ethical worries posed by such technologies, while also considering whether there are reasons for “cautious optimism” about their implications for our lives. Along the way, we touch on some key ideas from the philosophies of love and technology.

2012

A wealth of evidence suggests that love, closeness, and intimacy—in short relatedness—are important for people’s psychological well-being. Nowadays, however, couples are often forced to live apart. Accordingly, there has been a growing and flourishing interest in designing technologies that mediate (and create) a feeling of relatedness when being separated, beyond the explicit verbal communication and simple emoticons available technologies offer. This article provides a review of 143 published artifacts (i.e., design concepts, technologies). Based on this, we present six strategies used by designers/researchers to create a relatedness experience: Awareness, expressivity, physicalness, gift giving, joint action, and memories. We understand those strategies as starting points for the experience-oriented design of technology.

2016

This paper considers the complex relationship between ethics and social technologies. It is particularly concerned with what it means to be intimate or share ideas of intimacy with robots and avatars. Looking to the world of theatre and situating our ethical framework within two specific plays we are able to examine new technological narratives that inspire critical reflection on our current and future relationships, sexual taboos and ethical practices. It also poses the question of the role of the arts in preparing society for large technological and social shifts that challenge what we might think of current norms and values, noting that the shifts are not gender free. This allows us to open up to new ideas and modes of being that play with the boundaries of what it means to be intimate, including the entanglement of notions of vulnerability, immersion and control.