The main area of discussion arising from this concept was about the issues foreseen in its implementation. Most people felt sceptical that a service could create the right kind of culture where people didn’t interpret disagreement as conflict. People felt that although the app’s mechanisms to bring people together were really exciting, the idea of connecting people based on differences of opinion could be problematic, and that doing so in a group setting would be really challenging as group dynamics are often more intimidating for people. While the proposition makes allowances for this by learning about people before,during and after their interactions with other people, this would nonetheless be the biggest issue.

People were positive about the ideology of bringing people together in an environment where disagreements could be voiced and listened to. But everyone felt that they had not been heard and that others wouldn’t listen to them, with many people openly describing political correctness as being a confusing, inaccessible, judgmental and isolating force. It is clear that for a proposition like this to work, the principles of those services would have to be ingrained and upheld in as much user behaviour as possible.

In essence, the perception is that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to orchestrate an online or offline culture that would prevent users’ interactions from becoming conflicting and would likely create conflict and unpleasant experiences.

The counterargument to this claim is that the culture of existing, purely digital, social media platforms have created a climate that heightens the more combative elements of our, very natural human behaviours. If these environments are capable of influencing our interactive habits in this way, then surely this is evidence that, with the right design, they can indeed be redirected toward more constructive cultures.

Another discussion point around this proposition looks at it assuming that it can do exactly what it describes —bring people together and curate conversation that enables people to feel listened to and understood, even if not agreed with, and in this point we assume that this effective proposition would be adopted on a large scale – within this parameter we ask questions about the possibility of distorted public opinion and inauthenticity.

As with other propositions of this nature, there is nothing decidedly new about the idea of technology coordinating interactions between people, but what it alludes to is another more concerning progression —if large parts of our communities are brought together based on algorithms, and even those interactions and conversations are orchestrated based on algorithm design —we may be creating conditions for larger scale distortion of our ways of interacting. In turn, we may begin to question the authenticity of the interactions we have with other people. The question is, if a singular (albeit sophisticated) algorithm should flourish as a means of arranging our interactions, particularly around societal topics, could this be corrupted or have other effects of a similar calibre of existing social media (which often break down discussion)?

One area of discussion emerging from the research is that there seems to be a sense that the management and maintenance of a relationship is counter to romance. As a consequence, people sometimes feel obliged to ‘maintain’ those relationships in less methodical ways in favour of giving the sense that it is effortless. This dynamic means that people are reluctant to use other tried and tested means to enrich and strengthen relationships. Something as simple as a list of relationship goals or learning about how your mood influences your relationship may seem fine in a professional setting, but less so in a relationship. In this instance, Eros seems to give all parties in a relationship the permission to apply these tools and heuristics without it damaging a sense of romance, therefore helping people overcome very natural and common human failings, like simple forgetfulness.

Another important area of discussion is that this service began to emerge as a service that is more suited to relatively young relationships, so perhaps a relationship younger than 4 or 5 years. This is an indicator that the service might help couples to learn from each other and learn how to be with each other. In some way, this inherently leads to the shaping of the culture of a relationship and the behaviours of people within it. Some users suggested that they found this may challenge the other individual’s sense of authenticity because of the influence of the app on their behaviour and the genuineness of the relationship. Some felt it may even keep unhealthy relationships together (although the service includes mechanisms to prevent this).

It is easy to jump to a somewhat dystopian idea that this projected future could lead to a world of ubiquitous relationships, which are all strong and weak in the same areas because an algorithm has a preferred dynamic for relationships. t However, it is a valid theme to be exploring —What are the characteristic dynamics of romantic, human relationships that are positive, and which are negative? and according to whom?

Among the feedback from participants, there was a consistent request for the app to remain at some distance. While in this proposition the app’s role was encouraged and already fairly intimately connected to a relationship, elements of its presence seem to go too far, appearing to overstep on things too personal. This was not necessarily connected to areas such as sexual intimacy, but instead to suggestions regarding particular behaviours within relationships where a participant may feel that the behaviour is connected to their identity. Ultimately, this type of service needs to learn to navigate each person individually based on their personal boundaries or it needs to keep a distance overall.

The first thing that arose out of the research with parents was that there is a clear problem. For parents, the increased amount of time that children spend online, the breadth of their experiences and environments they engage with online exposes them to a plethora of issues, content and perspectives, which the parent will have no idea or no role, in —unless they intervene, censor content and experiences i or rely on the child to come to them and report. None of which are equivalent to a model where a parent is broadly (at specific ages) present and has control over the things a child is exposed to, mediating as they see fit. As children spend more time in online spaces, they simply cannot be parented in the same way, leaving parents concerned and at a loss with fairly basic mechanisms that they find insufficient. Some of them speak of this solution as a more sophisticated middle ground, which helps them parent and support their children without needing to be permissive or too authoritarian.

While it is clear that some parents would greatly welcome having additional tools at their disposal, a clear discussion that emerged from the research is that, while there is no right or wrong way of parenting, there is concern for these tools to be used inappropriately. Parents talked about their partners having extreme views or not respecting a child’s privacy. So, we raise the perspective that while these tools do potentially help parents protect their children from societal biases, or commercial and political agendas, what means are there to protect children from their parents?

It could be argued that should this coercive threat be realised, then it may be an inappropriate response to make the power struggle a battle between organisations and parents and to take that battle to the child’s device. Perhaps, it would be preferable to look for policy interventions to counter organisational threats. If the battle has to arrive at the child’s device, then a more child-focused approach may be more enabling. A service that engages children with value for them (and centres on the internal growth and learning of a child to understand multiple perspectives and build their own views) would surely be a more resilient offering. However, the question remains —under whose authority and guidance should a child’s perspective be defended and nurtured?

The most striking point that arose from the proposition was that teachers felt that the issue with empathy lay with the parents rather than the children. In most instances, the teachers described children as having quite plastic models of what it means to be a different person and were able to fairly easily empathise with others and alter their values if they found that they were in conflict, and were encouraged to do so. However, the children’s parents often had solidified beliefs and were now in the role of instilling or enforcing those beliefs onto their children. This meant that they were often actively constraining their children’s ability to fluidly adapt their perceptions of other people’s experience. With this perspective in mind, many participants proposed that the service be adapted to somehow include parents into the experiences, perhaps through school, community events.

Teachers also explained that what was lacking in children’s educational experience was the space to discuss, ask questions and explore the relevance of what they were learning. In this sense, the concept of learning about other people’s experience should be considered as an opportunity for them to learn about themselves and what these empathy experiences expose about who they are.

Many agreed that virtual reality was a fantastic way to create transformative experiences because of its immersive capability. However, they felt the content of some of the empathy experiences would likely be uncomfortable for many children. Therefore, the design of the experiences and the intensity with which they expose children to someone else’s life would have to be considered, not just on an age rated basis, but potentially on a case by case basis. To ensure those experiences were appropriate, it would be important to take into account what individual children are experiencing, what the community is going through andthe culture within the school. —all of which make the administering of this type of education highly challenging.

The most pressing topic was about the authorship of the experiences with many questions around proving the legitimacy of the stories being told. While it is proposed that experiences would be based on true events, they are still recreated stories that may be interpreted differently by many people. Although it is proposed for the stories to be curated in collaboration with assemblies of the public, experts, charities and individuals who have lived experiences of the issues being portrayed, it is clear that there will always be questions over the accuracy of the stories, particularly while they are being used to open children’s perceptions. There will always be some people that feel the process is brainwashing. When immersive technology gets used to provide transformative experiences for children —at what point does it become brainwashing?