Signal 2: Political discourse and technologies for empathy
Whenever we find ourselves meeting up with friends or relatives, we’d just hear this adage, “don’t talk about politics”. Indeed, this advise doesn’t just stay within the four corners. The internet made it easier for us to freely exchange our thoughts and ideas, but some will talk about the doubled edged nature of this exchange as it may exacerbate the polarization of our views as with similar cases to the Cambridge Analytica that took advantage of analytical segmentation techniques to deepen our biases through carefully targeted online ads. Although there is on-going debates on what causes what and when, but the fact remains. It’s dangerous talk to bring out those views in public.
I recently attended an event where Taiwan’s Digital Minister of Social Innovation, Audrey Tang spoke about the g0v movement and how they used online platforms such as Pol.is as a space to develop consensus on issues while minimizing the disconnection between people due to political discourse by taking advantage of clustering algorithms or governance innovations techniques such as the sandbox.org.tw as a testbed for policies. The ideas rooted in these civic technologies is to develop the emotional feel and shared understanding and experience of societal issues, to develop a virtual empathy to speak.
Holopolis, vTaiwan’s current civic tech project, is a step further towards that direction. With the use of chat bots to facilitate a personalized discussion by recreating the key personalities on certain issues and AR/VR technologies is used to simulate circumstances and situations that places us in the shoes of key events or experiences. Maybe for the most part, as our inter-connectivity grew, it amplified our weaknesses in understanding and empathy for issues that surround us and for others but I think these new approaches and innovations can help soften these dangers.
References:
Tang, A. (2018, September 20). Government By The People, With the People: How g0v.tw is Transforming gov.tw, Four Years After the Sunflower Occupy Movement. Lecture presented at Government By The People, With the People: How g0v.tw is Transforming gov.tw, Four Years After the Sunflower Occupy Movement in 20 Cooper Square 5th floor New York,New York10003 United States, New York.
Holopolis — Civic Deliberation in Virtual Reality. (n.d.). Retrieved September 24, 2018, from http://holopolis.pdis.tw/
