Empathetic Technology

This chapter explores the role of empathy in our relationship with technology. Empathy is defined as the human ability to put oneself in the place of another in order to better understand what that other person feels or thinks. In other words, it is the understanding and feeling of another person’s emotional and cognitive experience. This is a very human condition and not generally something we would associate with technology. However, as technology continues to evolve, particularly with the advent of more human technologies such as virtual agents who adopt a more involved relationship with their users, empathy has become more important. Empathy is a crucial aspect of human communication and as technology becomes more communicative, and more human, empathy will become an increasingly important part of our relationship with that technology.