[Just as there’s irony in our travelling to conferences to discuss technology-based illusions of being there together, and publishing our manuscripts about vivid presence experiences with few or no images (or videos, etc.), I wish there were more news stories about presence that went beyond text and photos. Here are links to two recent examples that do. In the first, “Empathy 101,“ a “comic journalist“ explains how medical schools are using a variety of technologies including virtual reality to increase students’ understanding of and respect for the experiences of their patients. A short description of the piece from The Journalist’s Resource is included below. The second example story, “Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?,” is a charming and thought-provoking personal essay from The New Yorker that combines drawings and subtle animation to compare the ways human infants and artificial intelligence language models learn and act. –Matthew]
Empathy 101: How medical schools are using improv theater, virtual reality and comics to help physicians understand their patients
In this research-based explainer, a comics journalist explores the use of the arts in medical education.
By Josh Neufeld
December 21, 2023
About the comic:
In “Empathy 101,” comics journalist Josh Neufeld uses the comic book form to highlight how medical schools across the U.S. have explored improv comedy, virtual reality and, yes, comics to improve communication and understanding between physicians and their patients.
The comic self-reflectively discusses the growing field of graphic medicine, which uses comics as a tool to tell personal stories about health care experiences, as well as to distill and discuss complex medical topics. Neufeld considers comics an ideal medium for a nonfiction piece about topic at hand. As he explains, comics “engender a strong sense of empathy for the ‘characters’ in the story.”
Neufeld’s well-sourced comic draws on a large body of published academic research, newspaper articles, and interviews with expert sources, including Dr. Marshall Chin, a physician and professor who teaches health equity courses at U. Chicago Medicine; Dr. Mohammadreza Hojat, a research professor at Thomas Jefferson University, who developed the Jefferson Scale of Empathy to measure the capacity in health care providers; and Kriota Willberg, a visual artist and clinical massage therapist who practices and teaches graphic medicine.
The characters’ quotes, appearing in shaded pink speech bubbles or pink rectangles, come directly from their interviews with Neufeld, from their interviews in newspaper articles, or from research papers authored by the characters. The text in light green represents Neufeld’s own narrative.
Neufeld is the creator of several graphic medicine comics, including “Vaccinated at the Ball: A True Story about Trusted Messengers,” which won the 2023 GMIC Award for Excellence in Graphic Medicine, Short Form, from the Graphic Medicine International Collective.
—
[From The New Yorker]
Is My Toddler a Stochastic Parrot?
The world is racing to develop ever more sophisticated large language models while a small language model unfurls itself in my home.
By Angie Wang
November 15, 2023
[Read the original in The New Yorker]