Think about what’s given to us by healers, doctors and massage therapists. What if technology, instead of taking from us or preying on us, could help us heal and build our inner life force? Over the past 30 years or so, medical science has gone in a new direction, combining psychology and brain science with almost every other field in medicine, giving us everything we need to understand and design media and technology to support our biology. We have everything we need to do this now. Once you understand this it completely shifts our relationship with both our media and technology, which we are immersed with now. We start to understand what it looks like to intentionally infuse the ingredients that support the positive social interactions and that support healthy bodies, including our minds, into our technology design. This new generation of technology also gives us an opportunity to be more connected and aware of how important our time with media and technology is.
This page has resources for designing a new class of technology. There are two books. The Emotion Organon and Designing Artificial Compassion. They are both about designing technology that cares about us. They describe the foundational principles required to support our biological functions for our continued interactions and immersions.
The devices, games and cyber environments we have designed or built right now could be anything. There are no rules or regulations. What if we intentionally designed technology to look out for us, to have our backs? By combining psychology and brain science with almost every other field in medicine - immunology, cardiology, endocrinology, wound healing and so on, remarkable scientists found something amazing. Positive emotions and experiences are the fuel for Our cells and body processes. Our biology runs on positive emotion. We have a hidden ecosystem made up of our organs, fluids, glands nerves, and body functions that is driven by a complex of emotion. One of the most remarkable examples of this is the heart. Inside our hearts we have receptor sites for the fluids we create when we experience love. When we experience love and compassion, the fluids, enzymes and peptides in us can regenerate heart tissue. Canadian scientists Gutkowska and Jankowski have not only grown heart tissue from these fluids once or twice, but they have been so successful at this, they created a patent for this process. This is just ONE of the amazing things discovered around positive human emotion and body function. The opposite is also true. Negative emotions can be harmful to our body functions. So imagine that we are now spending so much time with media and technology, but nobody has understood this effect on us yet. The new field of compassion science tells us not only do we thrive on giving or receiving positive emotions such as compassion, but merely witnessing it can have positive benefits.
How much positive or negative emotion are you absorbing from your technology? Your media? The new human science tells us you are what you spend time with. We can use this to our advantage. Although, yes, we spend much time with technology and media now, we can intentionally and positively use these ideas from medical science to support our human biology. So when we spend all that time immersed with technology and media design, it is not haphazard or even detrimental, but positively supports us. Of course, not all technology needs to be like this. But the assumptions of our original technological inventions were based on efficiency and automation. Its brought us many useful things. But the way we use technology and media now, surrounding ourselves with it, means we need to rethink those early assumptions. This is exactly the idea proposed described in these books on artificial compassion and compassion centered design. There is an renaissance in human science and we need to infuse our technology and media with these new insights.
Book 1: The Emotion Organon Now on Amazon. ISBN 979-885-1933-400
More about Book 1, The Emotion Organon.
An “organon” is a word meaning “knowledge” or instrument of knowledge. Our modern world is based on knowledge. Our schools, medicines,laws, and so on depend on it. AI, robotics, machine learning and generative AI would not exist without it. But what kind of knowledge? Is anyone asking?
It turns out the ideas of knowledge we live with in the world today are quite old. Aristotle’s ideas, formulated in his volume set “The Organon” from 50 BC, and Francis Bacon’s ideas, formulated in “The New Organon,” are from the 1620’s. Francis Bacon’s ideas of knowledge were formulated along with the invention of the telescope and microscope. He believed knowledge should be based on what we can observe, count, index and compare. It gave rise to patterns,. This is the foundation of machine learning and generative AI. Neither of these formulations of knowledge take into account our social relationships or emotional experiences. The science of this part of our lives just did not exist yet. But now it does.
In The Emotion Organon you learn the science of how our positive social and psychological experiences heal us and protect us, and how important they are to our survival. This is common sense and it is an important part of being human that belongs to all of us but which has been forgotten by modern technology and media.
In this book you find positive emotion plays a role in over 50% of our body functions. You will begin to see that our psychological and emotional reactions to things are actually a code for what we need biologically. When technologies and media are designed without support for this aspect of ourselves, we lose this aspect of ourselves. In the second book, Designing Artificial Compassion Technology, you will find out how we can design technology (and media) to remind us and amplify this potential of our positive selves.
This is a pilgrimage, to bring humanity back to technology and media and to our life force. Instead of turning away from our emotions and our bodies as we strap on and tune in, we can marvel at them. As a programmer, designer or engineer, when we churn things out so fast, and throw something together, and this is the culture, it can make it hard for us to stop and think about how what we build might be affecting us and what happens down the road as this technology is integrated into our lives. This awareness changes our mindset. We are training ourselves through our everyday experiences and attitudes towards one another, ourselves and the earth. These books open the door to a different kind of knowledge that belongs as part of the technology, environments and media of our lives. We find the knowledge is familiar. It is something we already know, but have forgotten, and when we come back to ourselves, there is a remembering.
Book 2: Designing Artificial Compassion Technology
Coming Soon.
More about Book 2.
What if, in our lives, we have been using technology that helps us with our happiness and mortality? What if we have a tool in our pocket that can help us avoid bullies and have better social options? Our current situation does not have to define us. Human kind has always made tools to help our lives be better. This is no different. We just had to realize we could do it. And now, we know how. It’s already started.
There is this concept with technology called automation and efficiency. It’s a great idea and has made many of life’s chores and tediums easier. As a woman, I love not beating clothes with rocks and instead using a washer and dryer. I also love driving my car. Today what I wish for is a gadget that would look out for me and help me with difficult situations, including social situations. This would increase quality of life, reduce anxiety, and provide support when the people I depend on cannot be around. Having health and protection should not just be for wealthy people. With technology design and the new discoveries of human science, it can be for all of us.
We can use technology not only for automation it can empower us. It can be a palette of ideas that are for our benefit. This is why we want to bring in those powerful new ideas on human science.
To find out more check out, in the coming weeks, I'll be posting some podcasts and videos. And be sure to check out the books. If you sincerely want a book but can’t afford it, please reach out to me, we can make it happen.
Copyright 2023 Dr. C. Mason