Article September 2, 1967 Issue

Computers and Companions

[For young adults]

GLORIA DOUGLASS

Students at colleges and universities are being presented with a new method for finding satisfying companionship. This method offers supposedly successful matching of one individual with another when answers to a number of questions are input to a computer.

An examination of the underlying concepts involved in this method indicates the agelong fact that young people seek someone of fill a void in their lives, to bring into their experience that which seems to be lacking. Erich Fromm in his book The Art of Loving says, "The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness."^{The Art of Loving, p. 9;} Sometimes one believes it necessary to overcome this sense of separateness through a meaningful relationship with another. One also finds a sense of urgency involved, indicating that one must find his future companion immediately or else face a long, lonely life.

The computer method supposedly offers an instant answer to one's desire for right companionship. But can a computer really solve a problem of companionship? Can reliance upon a merely human concept of man, evaluated by a machine, bring satisfying relationships into our experience? Earnest students of Christian Science would say No.

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