‘Relationships 5.0’ follows the history of human society and relationships between humans and technologies, as well as the current situation of technologies related to human–human and human–artifact communication such as artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR) including virtual reality (VR), and robots. Moreover, the book provides an outlook of the possible future directions on the relationship between these technologies and human society. The author is a sociologist and the head of the Honors Program in the School of Public Policy and Governance at the Hebrew University. The book is in detail organized by a number of literature reviews, interviews with many experts, and the analysis of investigations conducted by the author himself.
The book consists of two parts. Part I ‘The History of Relationships and Technology’ presents an overview of the history of human society, elaborating on how the technology of each era influenced the shape of its society. Part II ‘The Coming Future of Relationships’ focuses on AI, XR, and robots as technologies that are influencing and will influence our communication, indicating several issues these technologies are causing and will cause in future. These parts have different faces. The reviewer would like to characterize the first part as ‘a journey of knowledge’, and the second part as ‘a tramp and discard’.
Part I introduces the transformation of human society divided into four eras, corresponding each to specific technological advances. The first is the hunter-gatherer society in which prehistoric technologies used for hunting, gathering, housing, and so on, developed survival-based communities consisting of small clans (relationships 1.0). The second is the agricultural period in which agrarian technologies for mining, cultivation, and storage developed property and multi-generational families for maintaining it (relationships 2.0). The third is the industrial society in which factories and labor developed cities and nuclear families (relationships 3.0). The fourth is the information society in which newspapers, radios, TVs, and the internet developed wider connection between individuals and dismantlement of families (relationship 4.0). Following detailed description on the features of society in these eras, the text invites readers to a journey in which they virtually experience how humans communicated each other using technologies, while being surprised by the fact that the periods of these eras are getting shorter with the time. Although the author indicates that ‘readers should feel free to jump Part II of this book if it serves them better’, the reviewer recommends for readers to follow this part in order to understand the author’s arguments in Part II while enjoying the journey of knowledge.
Part II draws a future following the eras introduced in Part I (relationships 5.0). The author raises enormous changes in our daily life caused by AI, XR, and robots as three revolutions. The first is the cognitive revolution in which AI participates with the society as communication partners. The second is the sensorial revolution in which the boundaries between real life and virtual life can become blurry. The third is the physical revolution in which individuals have intimate relationships with robots. In each of these revolutions, the author presents a lot of opinions of both people positively accepting the revolutions and those who try to avoid it. It is just a tramp and discard between persons expecting the benefits from the technologies and those who are feeling anxious toward the social changes caused by them. Although the author provides future directions from ethical and political perspectives in the final section, no definitive solution is presented. Moreover, the author often uses the phrase: ‘It will only be a matter of time’ as the most important message.
Students on social studies of science can read this book as a well-organized text. Since the description about technologies such as AI, XR, and robots is limited to the minimum essential level, this type of readers should not expect to have knowledge about them. Instead, the book elaborates on what part of human life and society was and will be influenced by the technologies. Moreover, readers of the book are not required to have knowledge of statistics. Thus, general public not related to academic research can even enjoy the book as a kind of novel because of the style of the text.
Finally, the book adopts ‘Tamagotchi’ toy as an example showing that humans can have deeper connections even with artifacts not highly sophisticated. The reviewer, as a Japanese, feels both proud and ashamed of it.