When spouses can be made to order

I started brooding about the future of marriage a couple of years ago while sitting in a restaurant. At the adjacent table were two chattering young women. My ears suddenly went stiff when I heard one of them say, “I will introduce you to my boyfriend. We can share him. I don’t mind.” I realised that the end of matrimonial possessiveness was coming. What could it lead to?

So, I have been observing young men and women, and often getting into conversation with them. Sometimes I provoke young women by asking them when they plan to get married. Their response can be summed up thus: “Chheee! You think I am mad?!” When I ask young men the same question, they shudder and say, “Arey baapre! Marriage? Never!”

So, what about the future? To anticipate what is coming, one has to watch trends in advanced research in several areas: biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, neuroscience, fertilisation of donated sperms and eggs in artificial wombs, and, above all, colonisation of space. All of which will combine to produce techno-marriage products. Already robotic humanoids and pets are being created which look and behave very much like live ones (google for ‘humanoids’).

There are two most interesting areas of application of these ‘almost alive’ robots. The first one, which will accelerate research in robotics, is space exploration and colonisation. It is too dangerous for humans to stay too long in space. There are too many disturbing effects on the body. The journey of a few days to the Moon and back is manageable. The returned astronauts are kept in controlled conditions for weeks until their bodies recover. But to explore distant Mars, or the satellites of Saturn and Jupiter, bionic human copies are necessary. Only they can be designed to cope with the extreme conditions in space. Eventually, structurally different robots will be developed for different conditions of gravity, radiation and atmosphere.

The second area is the side-effects of creating bionic humans. A man or woman unwilling to cope with marriage can then order a bionic wife or husband with specified skills: love-making, conversation, humour, cooking, house management, playfulness with children, or whatever. The robot spouse can be switched off if it becomes a nuisance. Then its brain can be given new instructions. Every few years a technologically more advanced spouse can be purchased. Lifelong commitment, possessiveness, insecurity, as well as agonising and costly divorce are eliminated.

There will be no pregnancy. Babies will be created through donated sperm and eggs. Subtle coaching of the foetus will be done in artificial wombs so that when the baby emerges, it will be familiar with several languages, and brainwashed with ambition to be a writer, artist, cricketer, filmstar, scientist, or whatever, depending on parental aspirations. One can extend the consequences of robot spouses and manufactured babies into many areas. It’s a corny future.

But there will also be an amusing consequence — natural marriage among the elderly. The elderly would have experienced many bionic alliances and would want something more realistic — a real husband or wife. The elderly will have formal marriages and make jokes about robot marriages. The young men and women who are now dismissive about marriage will have a ‘proper’ marriage when they are in their 70s and 80s.

Want to brood more about the still distant future? Consider this: it will be difficult to replace defective robots on distant planets or satellites. So they will be programmed to repair and even replicate themselves. They will be programmed with Darwinian “survival of the fittest” skills so that they evolve on their own.

And that leads to the ultimate scary, or profound, thought. Are we humans on Earth bionic robots created by an advanced alien civilisation? I believe we are.

So, what warning does this essay give to males? Never brood about female chatter that you accidentally hear. It can drive you nuts.

(This was published in DNA.)