‘Our evolution has depended on us being a social species, and not as mere adjuncts of machines’

• I WAS interested to see your special features on combating loneliness, including Camden Council’s concerns about this.

However it might be better if those with power in society – including Camden – didn’t design loneliness into society in the first place.

Every organisation which tries to bully us into “communicating” with machines rather than people, when going about our daily life, is to blame for the increasing atomisation and alienation (and loneliness) we find all around us.

The fact that this pressure is from public, as well as private, bodies is a scandal. (I’m looking at you Camden Council.)

We should all live as human beings; our evolution has depended on us being a social species, after all, and not as mere adjuncts of machines.

I have, for example, never taken money from my bank account using an ATM; never used an automated till in a shop; and never returned a library book other than to a person. Nor will I.

To those who tell me that every increase in automation is an increase – by some measure – in “efficiency”, my response is: efficiency to what end? Towards the goal of a perfectly “efficient” world where we have no need to encounter another person face-to-face?

Our mundane daily interactions with one another are a core (and humanising) part of our life and our civilisation; they’re not something to be mechanised away as merely an inconvenient means to some other end.

ALBERT BEALE
Little Russell Street, WC1