Empathy amulet: a wearable to connect with strangers.

The Empathy Amulet is a wearable interpretation of Philip K. Dick's empathy box from his novel Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep? [3]. In the novel, thousands of people were anonymously connected with each other both haptically and emotionally when they grabbed the handles of their empathy boxes. The Empathy Amulet similarly networks a group of strangers together through shared experiences of physical warmth. It is not yet another technology for staying in touch with people you already know (and falling short). Rather, it encourages its wearer to make a deliberate and generous choice to invest their time and energy in connection with strangers, and it incorporates reciprocity into its design, such that helping oneself means helping other people. In today's world, people are less likely to feel empathy towards those not in their immediate network of family and friends, and, despite a proliferation of connective technologies, loneliness is on the rise [2, 5]. Surprisingly, it is the perceived sense of loneliness, and not actually being physically alone that has numerous health consequences for a significant portion of the population. Lakoff and Johnson's theory of embodied mind asserts that our physical and subjective experiences are inextricably linked, and the Empathy Amulet leverages the powerful connection between the physical experience of warmth and the subjective experience of social connectedness to combat loneliness and cultivate a stronger sense of connection with strangers [1, 4].