The Future of Feeling: Building Empathy in a Tech-Obsessed World
Written by Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips
Narrated by Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips
3/5
()
About this audiobook
An insightful exploration of what social media, AI, robot technology, and the digital world are doing to our relationships with each other and with ourselves.
There’s no doubt that technology has made it easier to communicate. It’s also easier to shut someone out when we are confronted with online discourse. Why bother to understand strangers—or even acquaintances—when you can troll them, block them, or just click “Unfriend” and never look back? However briefly satisfying that might be, it’s also potentially eroding one of our most human traits: empathy.
So what does the future look like when something so vital to a peaceful, healthy, and productive society is fading away? The cautionary, yet hopeful, answer is in this champion for an endangered emotion.
In The Future of Feeling, Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips shares her own personal stories as well as those of doctors, entrepreneurs, teachers, journalists, and scientists about moving innovation and technology forward without succumbing to isolation. This book is for anyone interested in how our brains work, how they’re subtly being rewired to work differently, and what that ultimately means for us as humans.
Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips
Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips is a journalist and editor who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her writing on law, finance, health, and technology has appeared in the Establishment, VICE, Quartz, Institutional Investor magazine, Law360, Columbia Journalism Review, and Narratively, among others. She writes a blog and newsletter about empathy featuring reportage, essays, and interviews. For more information, visit www.kaitlinugolik.com.
Related to The Future of Feeling
Related audiobooks
The Selfie Generation: How Our Self Images Are Changing Our Notions of Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Secret Pandemic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When Strangers Meet Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5We Should Get Together Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Evil: The Science Behind Humanity's Dark Side Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Husbands and Wives Club: A Year in the Life of a Couples Therapy Group Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Switch Craft: The Hidden Power of Mental Agility Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Born Digital: The Story of a Distracted Generation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAwkward: The Science of Why We're Socially Awkward and Why That's Awesome Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Friendship Cure: Reconnecting in the Modern World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMe, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black-and-White Thinking: The Burden of a Binary Brain in a Complex World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Uses of Delusion: Why It's Not Always Rational to Be Rational Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brainscapes: The Warped, Wondrous Maps Written in Your Brain-and How They Guide You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open: How to Untangle Our Relationship with Tech Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Passion for Ignorance: What We Choose Not to Know and Why Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5ADHD Nation: Children, Doctors, Big Pharma, and the Making of an American Epidemic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Who Are You, Really?: The Surprising Puzzle of Personality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mindwandering: How Your Constant Mental Drift Can Improve Your Mood and Boost Your Creativity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Seven Sins Of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Biography & Memoir For You
Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, and Live Fearlessly Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The House in the Cerulean Sea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5And Then There Were None Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twisted Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Divine Rivals: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If He Had Been with Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From Blood and Ash Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Series of Unfortunate Events #1 Multi-Voice, A: The Bad Beginning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tale Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Local Woman Missing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When No One Is Watching: A Thriller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pet Sematary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ivy League Counterfeiter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paris Apartment: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nothing to See Here Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dutch House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Five Years: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5See You on the Way Down: Catch You on the Way Back Up! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Future of Feeling
18 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5“Our future will likely be even more tech focused than the present. We can’t control all the tech products that come at us, but we should assert some agency in how they affect our lives.” – Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips, The Future of Feeling
This book addresses an important topic: how to build empathy in the use of our technology tools. One needs to look no further than strings of increasingly incendiary comments on social media forums to obtain evidence of the problem. The author has investigated the various ways technology is being used to foster empathy, such as Virtual Reality, Apps, Bots, Games, and Artificial Intelligence. This book outlines many options, along with advantages and potential abuses.
The author presents the research results of others in a coherent manner. I think it requires a specific interest in the subject to fully engage in the material. It could have used additional focus on building interpersonal skills via face-to-face interactions, listening to understand the other person’s point of view, asking non-inflammatory questions to find out more, and transferring those skills to social media. I value the research results presented and feel it was worth my time reading it. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Technology – especially social media – has made our communication more accessible over the last ten years. But has it enhanced the quality of our conversation? In this book, Phillips contends that empathy has lost out in the transition to digital technology. She cites events like the 2016 US election as proof of how we are unable to have a civilized conversation in the digital world.Thus far (in the first couple chapters in the book), I followed Phillips. However, as she went on in the book, she seemingly did not analyze new material deeply enough. She mainly dove deeply into thinking about Virtual Reality (VR) devices. She contends that, if done right, they can make us more empathetic as they allow us to see what it feels like to be in another’s virtual shoes. While not holding a prejudice against VR, I still am skeptical that they serve as a potential panacea for our communication woes.Through Phillips’ reports, I am encouraged that Silicon Valley, the starting point of so many of our technologies, is aware that empathy is in short supply in our world. However, call me old fashioned, but more technology might not be the solution for our human woes. Perhaps we should simply talk to each other more… face to face. This is what I try to do in my technology job – to have direct conversations as much as possible. Why do we need to try to develop expensive solutions when simple ones suffice?Here, Phillips lost me. I wish she had more ideas to make our conversation interesting, along traditional lines. VR just doesn’t cut the cheese for me, even if it is virtual cheese. I prefer engaging in real conversation over a cup of coffee or in a faith community. Do we need our public square to be virtual, too, or are we just missing out on the real life that’s going on around us? Must Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram be the only answer for every one of our woes? Phillips needed to tell me more about these questions. Instead, winding out her exploration, she seemed to hide herself behind technology when I needed to see her common humanity.