Could you love one of these?: What does it mean for a human to make an emotional connection to a piece of technology? Can we really feel for a machine, and can the machine feel anything back?

'ALEXAAAAA …' The most common name shouted out loud in our sitting rooms isn't a beloved child's, parent's or spouse's, but belongs to a piece of technology. In these socially distanced times, we're directly communicating less and less with each other, more and more through and with technologies. These interactions with inanimate machines aren't purely transactional – asking them to do something more efficiently than a human and without whinging – but relational, as if they were part of the family.