Summary
When, where, and who gets to touch and be touched, and who decides? How does touch bring us closer together or push us apart? These are urgent contemporary questions, but they have their origins in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. Laurie Taylor talks to Simeon Koole, Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and History at the University of Bristol about his new study of the way in which the crowded city compelled new discussions about touch, as people crammed into subway cars, skirted criminals in London's dense fogs and visited tea shops, all the while negotiating the boundaries of personal space. How did these historical encounters shape and transform our understanding of physical contact into the present day?
Also, digital touch. Carey Jewitt Professor of Technology at the Institute of Education, London, explores the way technology is transforming our experience of touch. Touch matters. It is fundamental to how we know ourselves and each other, and it is central to how we communicate. So how will the the digital touch embedded in many technologies, from wearable devices and gaming hardware to tactile robots and future technologies, change our sense of connection with each other. What would it be like if we could hug or touch digitally across distance? How might we establish trust or protect our privacy and safety? How might radically different forms of touch impact our relationships and the future?
Producer: Jayne Egerton
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. I'm the host of Your Dead to Me, where the best names in comedy and history |
| 0:05.5 | join me to learn about and laugh at the past. You are a traitor. And in the new series, we'll meet |
| 0:11.2 | Aristotle. I think he might have been a time traveller. Someone who's like almost a glitch. |
| 0:15.3 | We'll dive into the causes of the British Civil Wars in the 1600s. In England at this period, |
| 0:19.8 | there's people can't get on the housing ladder. |
| 0:21.5 | This sounds familiar. And we'll discover the arts and crafts movement. I love the clothes. I love |
| 0:26.5 | the vibe. Yes, we're a comedy show that takes history seriously and then laughs at it. You're dead to me. |
| 0:31.3 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds. Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:44.5 | This is a Thinking Aloud podcast from the BBC, and for more details and much, much more about thinking aloud, |
| 0:47.5 | go to our website at BBC.co.com. |
| 0:53.9 | Hello, something rather startling once happened to me in the Sistine Chapel, not, I rushed to say, a sudden |
| 0:56.0 | religious conversion, but a juxtaposition of disparate elements that have stayed with me ever since. |
| 1:03.1 | Like everyone else, I'd paid my 60 euro entrance fee and was then bundled into the chapel |
| 1:08.3 | alongside a motley crowd of eager tourists. |
| 1:12.2 | It was cramped. People pushed against each other to get a better sight of Michelangelo's ceiling. |
| 1:18.8 | Personal space was invaded. It was then I suddenly became aware of a visual paradox. |
| 1:25.2 | While we were all bunched together, what was attracting all our attention |
| 1:29.4 | was the famous mural of God extending a finger to Adam's finger, extending but not touching |
| 1:37.7 | for that depiction. But what startled me was that absence of touch being observed by a crowd of people who were necessarily in such close touch with each other? |
| 1:50.1 | Well, that old memory was brought to mind by a new book that seeks to provide an insightful history of Britain in 19th and 20th centuries |
| 1:58.3 | by concentrating on that singular element of daily life, the touch, |
| 2:03.5 | the touch or the absence of touch. How touch at times brings us closer together, and at other times |
... |
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