By BRYAN PATTERSON 23apr06

'They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself'. - Andy Warhol

THERE'S something sad about robotic electronic pillows that let you send hugs remotely to loved ones far away.

Basically, the hugger squeezes a pillow and speaks the name of the person they wish to receive the hug into an inbuilt microphone.

The voice recognition software then connects to another pillow owned by the hug recipient.

Sensors convert the hug into vibrations that are instantly sent to motors in the recipient robotic pillow, which creates a corresponding remote "squeeze".

If someone is not home to receive the hug, the recipient pillow can take messages.

The gadget, designed mainly as a way to keep grandparents and grandchildren "in touch", is pretty clever. But a mechanical embrace from a soft cushion cannot replace the real thing. The novelty surely will wear off.

Technology makes it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things it makes easier to do don't need to be done.

Technology aids our human disconnection. We connect via email or mobile rather than in person.

We no longer need flesh and blood associations. We can communicate via videophones.

Psychotherapist and writer James Hillman painted a frightening picture.

He said: "I can watch 34 channels of TV; I can get on the fax and communicate with people anywhere; I can be everywhere at once; I can fly across the country. I've got call waiting, so I can take two calls at once. I live everywhere and nowhere. I can plug into all the world's stock prices, commodity exchanges. But I don't know who lives next door to me."

Albert Einstein wrote that a human being is part of "a whole, called by us the universe".

Einstein said we often experience ourselves as something separate from the rest of humanity. He said this was an "optical delusion" that could restrict us to personal desires and to affection for only a few persons nearest us.

"Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Einstein also said it had become appallingly obvious that our technology had exceeded our humanity.

As Aldous Huxley said, technological progress had merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

The problem with our world is that we disconnect from each other because we think happiness is about accumulating material things as fast as we can rather than strengthening our relationships.

American writer Erma Bombeck once observed that it seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super-sophisticated communication, we often suffered from a shortage of listeners.

We are addicted to speed; everything must be done in a hurry, even relationships. The problem is that speed does kill. It kills the spirit.

We go so fast that we are out of tune with others; out of synch. And the only antidote is to let our souls catch up with our bodies.

As writer Annie Dillard said, how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

We sometimes think of life as an inexhaustible well, but it isn't. How many more times will you see the sun rise? Or watch your child sleeping? Or share a meal with your friends? Perhaps not as many as you think.

MARK Twain said the proverb "time and tide wait for no man" was true for a billion years. "But in our day of electric wires and water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits not for time nor tide."

God does not want us to go through life centred only on ourselves.

We need relationships with each other. We need to share joys and hardships with others. We need to learn from each other.

And that means sometimes taking the time to persevere with relationships that are a pain. They are often the ones that will teach us the most.

Scottish theologian William Barclay once wrote a prayer that fits the times: "In our homes we have been careless and inconsiderate; we have been moody and irritable and difficult to live with; we have treated those whom above all we ought to cherish with a discourtesy we would never dare show to strangers. For this forgive us, O God."