Avatars and robots: healthcare and wellbeing in the future

Health and Wellbeing Lunch Debate

Abstract

Robots and Avatars was conceived and produced by body>data>space, with key partner NESTA. Between June and November 2010, they hosted a series of Lunch Debates which brought together diverse and specialised groups of professionals and experts to deepen the research and further the conversations around the themes of Robots and Avatars. The debates centred around Health and Wellbeing, Artificial Intelligence, Behaviour and Ethics and Future Workplace with expert provocateurs and top level thinkers. The groups were formed from a researched pool of experts from a wide variety of backgrounds, including academics, creative practitioners, industry professionals, public service specialists, artists and designers. They imagined a world that involved a mix of robots, avatars, tele-presence and real time presence in the work place/team space, working within the projects overall themes for young people of Collaborative futures, Multi-identity issues, Future workplace environments, Future career opportunities.
The education of a young person starting secondary school in 2011 will have to stand them in good stead for the next 60 years. With this in mind, Robots and Avatars looked at how young people will work and play with new representational forms of themselves and others in 10 to 15 years time. The debate speculated what that future may be like and asked how the education system can evolve to respond to the changes we will face in our digital futures? These questions stem from body>data>space’s previous work which explored their evolving virtual and physical identity over the past 20 years. The Lunch Debates ask, ‘What sort of world are we educating our young people for?’ and are designed to help extend the understanding of what young people's needs are for the future world of work, given that many of the jobs they will do have not been invented yet. The debates also envision the skill-sets, aptitudes, resources and methodologies that will be required by today's young people who will be at work from 2020 onwards.

An increase in life expectancy and better health provision means that the population in the UK is ageing. Over the last 25 years the percentage of the population aged 65 and over increased from 15% in 1984 to 16% in 2009, an increase of 1.7 million people. This will significantly affect the future of health and wellbeing. Robots and Avatars debated what these changes will mean for young people today and in the future. Looking at avatars that can predict life choices to help you make more informed decisions, doctor appointments that take place on your mobile phone and toothbrushes that send information about your health to your bathroom mirror – this lunch debate asks what young people and schools can be doing now, to prepare for a technologically pervasive future of health and wellbeing. This Lunch Debate also explored new ways that care and medicine are going to be administered – looking at robot doctors, cybernetics, brain implants and returning again and again to the question of whether humans will always need face to face care?