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What is the element of human interaction that you crave most in lockdown? For many of us, it has to be touch.
People who live alone obviously suffer most from the absence of physical contact. But even I, living with a husband and three tactile children, have moments of so-called “skin hunger”. Whenever I see my mother – she’s in my bubble, it’s allowed – the urge to wrap my arms around her and lay my head on her bosom is so strong that I have to close my eyes and wait for the moment to pass.
What if I could get that hug – or a perfect simulation of it – at the tap of an icon? Scientists believe it will soon be possible to relay the sensation of touch across wireless technology, as fast and convincingly as we can already relay sound and vision.
The University of Surrey has just opened an innovation centre for developing 6G wireless technology, which is expected to supersede 5G within a decade. 6G will, we are told, provide such copious bandwidth that a new generation of sensory AI is certain to follow. Surgeons will use robotic hands to feel their way around the intestines of patients on the other side of the world. Couples will be able to snuggle up while thousands of miles apart. The elderly will dandle new grandchildren on their knee without ever leaving the care home.
One obvious glitch in this digital future is the absence, so far, of any gadgets that can adequately recreate human touch. The porn industry – always a tech pioneer – has been trying for years to develop “haptic devices”, such as gloves, skin patches or full bodysuits, full of tiny motorised moving parts, that can be linked up to virtual reality headsets. The results have been underwhelming.
But even if the sensations were satisfactory, would the experience be? Perhaps for porn, which doesn’t require any depth of emotion. Love and friendship, however, are delicate and intangible; and one of the clearest lessons of lockdown is that digital simulacrums are no substitute.
This time around, no one is even suggesting that it might be fun to meet up on Zoom. It’s exhausting enough having to do it for work: trying to read social cues from a screen full of tiny people waving woodenly in boxes. The faking of intimacy feels even worse when you do it with people you love.
Almost any method of communication works better, right now, than the counterfeit reality of a screen. An old-fashioned phone conversation – a proper audio-only chin-wag, without the distraction of seeing your own chin wagging back at you – is much more likely to elicit sincere confidences and gossip and mirth.
Letter-writing, too, has a renewed appeal. You can do it in your own time, it makes you look curiously accomplished (like baking your own bread – another lockdown revival) and it’s a lovely surprise for the person on the receiving end. Most importantly, the form itself implicitly acknowledges the reality of the situation: we are physically separated, but I am thinking of you.
Figures released by Royal Mail over the summer showed that one in five UK adults (18 per cent) have been sending more letters and cards since the pandemic began. I have written more letters this year than at any time since the invention of email. There will, I suspect, always be more comfort in a real letter than a fake hug.
