Interface Critique conference, Berlin University of the Arts, 2016

My purpose for this paper is to investigate contemporary Internet projects that examine a particular glitch in the relationship between human and machine, focusing on the schism that occurs when neither can seem to understand each other. The interface becomes a stage on which the “default communiqués of the networked world” demonstrate the principal way technological devices differ from human beings; the issue is one of logic versus emotion. By only following the logic of what it has been programmed to do and say, the machine fails to grapple with the existential impact of its words on the user. Through the lens of philosophical, art, and media theory, I believe these projects can be viewed as exemplifying new perspectives on concepts of the abhuman, post-digital communication, and post-human experience at the point where human identity is questioned by the interface. The appropriating of a human existential experience creates a new vantage point for considering Human Computer Interaction.

In Defence of the Human Being, 2021

In an age of growing virtual communication, the question arises what role human empathy plays in virtual relations. In order to answer this question, the paper distinguishes between: (1) primary, intercorporeal empathy; (2) extended empathy which is based perspective-taking; and (3) fictional empathy which is directed to imagined or fictitious persons. Based on these analyses, the paper investigates the impact of the growing virtualization in present culture. This is captured by the notions of: (1) “phantomization” as a media-based simulation of direct reality, and (2) disembodied communication which shifts the modes of empathy toward the fictional pole, at the risk of merely projecting one’s own feelings onto the other.

Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 2021

In this paper I aim to show with the aid of philosophers Edith Stein and Peter Goldie, how empathy and other social feelings are instantiated and developed in real life versus on the Internet. The examples of on-line communication show both how important the embodied aspects of empathy are and how empathy may be possible also in the cases of encountering personal stories rather than personal bodies. Since video meetings, social media, online gaming and other forms of interaction via digital technologies are taking up an increasing part of our time, it is important to understand how such forms of social intercourse are different from in real life (IRL) meetings and why they can accordingly foster not only new communal bonds but also hatred and misunderstanding.

In Medias Res, 2022

The Internet age of media communication has been gradually and subtly changing the way in which we experience ourselves and the world we live in. Broadcasting our lives on the web also involves the everyday exteriorization of emotions onto the technical mediators of the third degree, as Jensen calls them (2006). Expressions of emotional experience is something we see every day on social networks, but they are also becoming an integral part of user content under the media text on web portals. These so-called intellectual technologies are acquiring some of the essential human characteristics such as rationality, memory, calculation, and translation, as well as emotionality and communication (Carr 2014, Turkle 2011). Where do Emotions live when we transfer them into the virtual world and how do they become an integral part of media content? Where does one’s soul live when transferred to one’s virtual self? These are the questions we will try to answer in the first part of this paper. We will analyse the virtual space, its possibilities and limitations. We will discuss the potential of online media to mediate emotional experiences. We will also seek to understand technology and devices as an alternative humanity, when people fail or refuse to act by themselves. We will try to find answers to questions about the consequences of such mediation, referring to the research of other scholars including Siva Vaidhyanathan, Sherry Turkle, Nicholas Carr, and others.

Inquiry, 2021

Despite its long history of investigating sociality, phenomenology has, to date, said little about online sociality. The phenomenological tradition typically claims that empathy is the fundamental way in which we experience others and their experiences. While empathy is discussed almost exclusively in the context of face-to-face interaction, I claim that we can empathetically perceive others and their experiences in certain online situations. Drawing upon the phenomenological distinction between the physical, objective body and the expressive, lived body, I: (i) highlight that empathy involves perceiving the other's expressive, lived body, (ii) show that the lived body is not tied to the physical body and that empathy can take place outside of face-to-face interactions, and (iii) argue that the lived body can enter online space and is empathetically available to others there. I explore two ways in which the other's lived body enters online space and can be empathetically perceived: first, in cases where our face-to-face encounter is technologically-mediated over video link and, second, by showing how the other's texts, as speech, can form part of the other's lived body. Investigating empathy online not only furthers our understanding of online encounters but also leads to a refined conception of empathy more generally.

A major claim about virtual reality (VR) is that it can foster empathy through digital simulations. This article argues, however, that technologies intended to foster empathy merely presume to acknowledge the experience of another, but fail to do so in any meaningful way. With empathy, the experiential grounds upon which ethical and moral arguments are made require an essential transmissibility, and that which cannot be expressed in seemingly 'universal' terms cannot be acknowledged. This article makes its arguments through a discussion of VR as an 'empathy machine', and contextualizes empathy in digital media by suggesting it repeats not a psychological construct, but a concept derived from late 19th-century German aesthetic theory and its conceptualization of Einfühlung. It proposes radical compassion as an alternative to empathy, and suggests that empathy is a limiting and problematic concept that effaces another's experience unless it can be made sensible. Empathy machine refers to any attempt to make sensible to oneself the emotional experience of another via technology, often with the goal of inhabiting another body. This term has regularly been used to describe virtual reality (VR), as VR, at least ideally, permits one to see through another's eyes, embodying their experiences, thus 'empathising' with them. Empathy machines can also refer to various technological means for identifying subtle movements of the human face in order to create realistic digital models of facial expressions mapped to emotional states, which are used both in popular games and in the context of autism therapy (e.g. Kandalaft et al., 2012), often as a troubling method to 'cure' autism through VR-based avatars and simulations. Digital media are thus assumed to provoke an empathetic response from an individual while playing games, communicating within virtual worlds, and beyond – if these technologies are properly designed. But the specific association of VR with something called empathy, occurring throughout

Azimuth, 2019

The contemporary world is characterised by the pervasive presence of digital technologies that play a part in almost every aspect of our life. An urgent and much-debated issue consists in evaluating the repercussions of these technologies on our human condition. In this paper, I tackle this issue from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. I argue that phenomenology offers a contribution to our understanding of the implications of digital technologies, in the light of its analysis of the essential structures of human experience, and especially of its corporeal grounding. In the light of this analysis, it is possible to investigate the ways in which these essential structures are affected by digital technologies. In particular, it is possible to highlight the ways in which some digital technologies involve a process of disembodiment or simply a superficial embodiment of experience.

In its volume 6, Culture Machine published in a contribution by Jeremy Gilbert: “Signifying Nothing: ‘Culture’, ‘Discourse’ and the Sociality of Affect.” In this article, he discussed the search in Cultural Studies for a theoretical approach that can effectively address the experiential dimension of culture. The article brings into question how to understand cultural forms like music, that convey recognizable effects at a corporeal level, which are not effectively described nor fully understood through linguistic models. Affect, Gilbert suggests, is a concept that allows us to discuss “a more or less organised experience, an experience probably with empowering or disempowering consequences, registered at the level of the physical body, and not necessarily to be understood in linguistic terms”. However, his contribution also underscores this experience as always organized by social relations. But how do we engage with an affective and corporeal social that is mediated by technology? To expand on some of these issues I have sought the insight of Nestor Garcia Canclini and Maritza Urteaga, two scholars engaged in the study of new technologies and youth culture in Latin America. I think both their work and Jeremy Gilbert’s essay bring under scrutiny the conceptual paradigms operating in the study and critique of culture in the information era. Here are some of their observations from the field and reflections on how to think about the social in the digital age.

The Uncertain Future of Empathy in Posthumanism, Cyberculture and Science Fiction, 2016

Digital technologies are transforming our lives. Friends and loved ones are now only a text, Facebook post or Skype call away. But is " being in touch " the same as intimacy, and is face-to-face communication required for empathy? If " interface " is the site of interaction with a medium or system, does the digital interface facilitate or impede human interactions that lead to empathy, and is it " enactive " in Maturana and Varela's sense, where user and system co-evolve? If so, what are we evolving into? And in the rush to develop the latest technological toys and tools, where is the body in all of this? My paper examines these issues in light of new media and digital subjectivity, psychological and anthropological research on mirroring and empathy, and research in behavioural neuroscience. I link these lines of enquiry with a critical and understudied aspect of social media—the concept of intentionality in light of Ihde's phenomenology of technics. When we interact in new media environments our actions are not only mediated by embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity, and background relations with the interface, our interpretation and communication is mediated by the program we are using, a phenomenon I call programmed intentionality. The critical discourse is not so much if and how digital technologies are changing us, but why it matters. With thanks from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for funding this research

Kultura (Skopje), 2015

Internet enables the exchange of information with incredible speed, allowing at the same time users to share their feelings, thoughts and opinions. This exchange that can be carried out virally spreading the interest about people and events that transcends our geographical and social horizons, represents a civilizational progress when it’s not recognized just as technological progress, but also as an increasing process of humanization of man and society. Empathy, which was once reserved for the narrowest community, can now be expanded globally. This optimistic view, however, doesn’t take under consideration that human capacity for empathy isn't limitless. Perceptual, cognitive, and emotional overload can lead to saturation and desensitization or dissociation where there is apperception of others, but without any emotional involvement. The paradox of empathy lays within its possibility of being used as a means of control and manipulation: it’s then a pure mimicry of empathy. It c...