Why should we build an empathy machine?
Virtual Reality and digital humanity in a world disconnected from emotions
(original version in Spanish, check it out here)
In every transmedia meeting and technology event that I have visited during the past year, the rising star of every conversation was VR (Virtual Reality). Surprisingly, the virtual reality that we imagined as children, as this magical space that would allow us to have experiences of bilocation and give us a vehicle to get into synthetic paradises is not being all we hoped for.
Well, to be true to ourselves, the world is not being all that we’ve imagined either.
At each event, demo or panel when VR is brought up, the idea of Virtual Reality is almost inevitably accompanied with the concept of empathy. Yes, virtual reality as an empathy machine par excellence.
Experience:
My first virtual reality trip leads me to a roller coaster. Well, it’s teaching me courage, I think. It sounds like a good idea.
Then it tries to scare me away with zombies and puting me in a position of things I wouldn’t normally do. Takes me away from the real world. It’s fine and fun. Got it.
Then the storytelling begins to delve into something more similar to a videogame and for a moment, it seems natural. Become your own hero. Step into the shoes of someone in a journey to slay dragons or surviving a futuristic cosmic adventure that can not be lived in our boring daily lives.
I understand. I get it.
I also understand that we are at the dawn of a new language. To be more precise: we are at the dawn of a new technology that has not yet created its own language. And language is important. Language builds up boundaries of what it’s possible or imaginable. Language allows you to name our dreams and fears and through that process, we can build our reality. Language builds community. It builds the future.
The creation of this language is a key process that should not be attached to the creators of the tool. We do not want those who invented printing press to be the only ones who can publish books, do we?
Having a seat at the table where this new language is being disccused should be something diverse in origin, gender, thoughts and action. If the proposed audiovisual language lacks this diversity, its inherent truth is diminished. If this happens, it becomes a monopolic conversation or a dead language. Not interesting in any of them.
Probably this explosion of the notion of a VR language will come with the democratization of technology and when not only you get a magical cardboard box delievered with your newsppaer to your home but when users start to have both: the ability to understand new frame manipulation (yes, you can move around with your device. It does not mean someone is not framing and manipulating reality, the same way we always did) as well as for content creators of every community to have the possibility to tell their own story with their own voice.
Experience: Part Two
Now I turn around with my cardboard, paying attention to what everyone calls “the empathy machine,” I’m supposed to walk into a scene that will wake all my dormant emotions.
I understand.
Empathy has many different definitions that encompass a broad range of emotional states, including caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person’s emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling;[6] and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other.[7]It also is the ability to feel and share another person’s emotions.(Wikipedia).
All the stories and all the wonderful storytellers that are skilful are activators of empathy. All of them. That’s what a good story does.
There are studies that suggest that the brain of the storyteller synchronises with the brain of the listener and activates the same areas in the brain simultaneously when a story is being told. It’s the creation of a bridge that leads us to shared feelings and experiences.
Then if this machine already exists, if empathy has been fuelling humanity for years since the first oral storytellers if the machine is the story itself, then why VR does it better?
Pause.
It is doing it better, already?
Both virtual reality and the world mediated by stories on screens protect us from the option of being vulnerable, they give us a safe way to participate in an individual or collective action without actually live it and marking, of course, a well-defined emergency exit to the pain.
They allow us to be couch activists defending painful causes with a single click. It allows us to connect with hundreds of people a day without really connecting with any. It allows us to say things that we would not tell anyone if you had to look at that person in the eye and experience the feedback.
The technology, even though it has wonderful effects as well, often gives us that option, to be undercover cowards. We already live in virtual realities every time we turn to social media whether or not we use Google Cardboard.
The problem is not technology but again in the education of the citizen (or user), who is barely understanding how to be a citizen of his own place and now has to deal with shared, virtual, factual and augmented realities. Being a citizen of a thousand places is not easy. It is a learning curve that we should walk hand in hand, creators and users of this new story.
So, why is virtual reality an empathy machine?
Real empathy leads to connection while sympathy brings us closer to complete disconnection.
The use of virtual reality tools for a new information society is still questionable or at least, to be kind, it’s still in very early rough stages of development.
I can be in the center of a conflict , but looking at it from the outside (disconnected), I can’t affect it, I’m just floating in the external pain of another person and often I fail to perceive that pain entirely because I am mesmerised by technique. If the story is powerful, I am never disengaged from it. No matter how wonderful the technique may be, it becomes invisible when faced with great storytelling.
Sometimes, VR takes away the option of being truly vulnerable, because it removes the possibility of a powerful dialogue of actions, it just surrounds us with conflict and exploration but we do not necessarily feel it. When we lack narrative, only our sympathy is being activated.
Do we have to build more empathy machines or do we have to be better storytellers?
Can I be empathic in a virtual world if I’m not empathic in reality ?
The courage to be seen by others in a state of vulnerability, is sometimes being removed from this new concept of virtual empathy. Have we thought, that maybe we’re building machines for narcissism? Narcissism derived from the fear of being an ordinary person, of not feeling sufficiently extraordinary (Brene Brown) and the need to enter safely in experiences that we wouldn’t have in any other way.
When we create an experience of virtual reality where you are in a conflict zone, experiencing the pain of others, am I triggering empathy? Or is virtual empathy a new business? Putting a filter on my Facebook photo makes me really support a cause? A meme makes me funny? Does photoshop really make me prettier? Can I truly travel to the center of pain being protected by a digital armor?
The narcissistic side of this wonderful technique is perhaps separating us from real empathy. For now, to develop a true immersive storytelling, we, human beings must develop ourselves empathy, sensitivity, vulnerability and courage in the face of uncertainty. The power to ask why I’m in the places where I am, and the power to affect first reality, then virtuality.
We all have an empathy machine that makes us better storytellers, look inside. That’s where the story is at.
Recommended: Brené Brown and the power of empathy
María Laura Ruggiero
#StoryHackers
Follow at @Seirenfilms
