Love and Technology

This session will challenge your assumptions about how we meet, marry, love, and reproduce. Debora L. Spar, in Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny, surveys human history and concludes that the decisions we make about our intimate lives are driven, and always have been driven, by technology. These days, it’s assisted reproduction, robotics, and artificial intelligence that will be guiding our personal choices. Dr. Merle Berger, a pioneer in reproductive technologies like IVF, describes, in Conception: A Fertility Doctor’s Memoir, the rapid development of those technologies, the decoupling of sex from reproduction, and the ethical conundrums we will continue to face in the future. This fascinating session will be hosted by Carey Goldberg, WBUR’s host of CommonHealth and author of Three Wishes: A True Story Of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak and Astonishing Luck On Our Way To Love and Motherhood. Media sponsorship by WBUR 90.9 FM.