IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 32

a patient between clinic appointments and subsequently improve
outcomes from within their currently existing workflow. We anticipate
the data captured by the app to
improve triaging and overall delivery
of mental health across the world,
especially in a population health
management perspective.
For a patient, we expect to see
improved mental wellbeing as they
achieve a greater self-awareness of
the impact sleep, mood, and physi-

OPEN LETTER

Ganesh Gopalakrishna is Assistant
Professor, Department of Psychiatry,
University of Missouri-Columbia,
Columbia MO 65213, U.S.A. Email:
gopalakrishnag@health.missouri.edu.
Sriram Chellappan is Adjunct Professor, Department of Computer Science, Missouri University of Science
and Technology, Rolla, MO 65401,
U.S.A. Email: chellaps@mst.edu.

(continued from page 15)

Many people are online because
they must be, and with a tool that
increases personal time definition, the real problem in our lives
is sufficient shared experience in
unplugged intervals. But for the
reasons I've mentioned, sufficient
shared experience in unplugged
intervals can be challenging.
Even if we target the "app generation," who are impatient and expect
algorithmic results in the world, we
must acknowledge that our dependence (whether we like it or not)
is now on a world being made by
groups of people who share the
view that there should be ubiquitous, pervasive experiences taking
place solely through systems of their
design and ownership. This is not
social. However, the people making
this world are very social - just not
with the people in their local locale
whom they do not know.
In my observations, the "app
generation" is highly social, well
connected to each other through
apps that teach them about each
other's minds. They've created a

Author Information

cal activities have on each other
and modify their lifestyle accordingly. Through this self-awareness,
MoodTrek becomes a platform to
empower and support patients in
the management of their own physical and mental health with guidance from their clinicians.
The app was released to the
Google Play Store on March 17,
2015, and is expected to be released
to the App Store soon. The app is
free to download.

customized society outside their
local locale and it works for them,
perhaps at the exclusion of those
in their local environment. However, when these people do meet
in groups to work on laptops and
socialize both in and out of the network, they are close. You observed
"light conversation" but did you
consider that "light conversation" in
combination with the conversation
record on the online back channel? Together, this may form a more
complete record of sociability.
People do show empathy, with
or without phones. They just don't
often show empathy to people they
don't know or have anything in common with. We're evolving that way
as evidenced by both parts of our
government and its proposed policies, and the worldwide response
to the refugee crisis. Walls are being
built to block people searching for
an escape from an untenable situation. That is lack of empathy for
unknown others on a grand scale.
Lack of empathy for unknown
others could be due to the condiIEEE Technology and Society Magazine

tions of living in a highly fragmented, heterogeneous society with
many different "norms" and a technology that conveniently enables
members of that society to connect
with those who share their norms
and ignore those who don't.
Blaming a technology and suggesting we rid ourselves of it, even temporarily, isn't going to fix the problem
of not extending ourselves to reach
across to those who are different.
For that we need to change our biases towards our preferred "norms,"
extending ourselves to include those
not like us in meaningful, social ways.
That is the block to empathy.
Technology merely enables us to
more easily ignore those not like us.
Sincerely,
-Sally Applin
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Kent, Canterbury
Centre for Social Anthropology
and Computing

∕

december 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015