Empatheme – Press Release, 2022.6.14, Tokyo
The pioneer of the global mobile phone market unveils “Empatheme,” a communication platform that cultivates heart-to-heart connections.
The result of 10 years of research and development in Silicon Valley transitioned into a new endeavor to create communities where people can get connected and help each other through sharing their practices.
The Empatheme Foundation (Tokyo, Executive Director: Rikko Sakaguchi), a non-profit charity organization, has established a communication platform: one that utilizes subtle human behaviors and voices alongside the surrounding atmosphere to overcome the limitations of the intrinsic nature of communication.
To promote this initiative, we will be conducting a crowdfunding campaign on Kibidango website from June 14 to August 11, 2022. https://kibi.co/Empatheme
Empatheme Foundation
Rikko Sakaguchi (Executive Director)
2017 – present: Empatheme Foundation, Executive Director https://en.empatheme.org/
2012 – present: SomniQ, Inc. Founder & CEO https://www.somniq.com/
2002 – 2011: Sony Ericsson Mobile Communication (EVP, Chief Creation Officer, Board Director)
1999 – 2001 Sony Headquarters, Strategy Division, Sony Ericsson Joint Venture Project leader
1987 : Sony Corporation
1963 : Fukuoka, Japan
What Empatheme Can Do and Why it Matters
It’s the connection. It’s like walking alongside one another — a society where hearts are connected and close. It is given as a matter of course that is important; however, the truth is that it’s more than complicated to be close to and engage with each other in a caring manner.
Why?
It is not simply because of a lack of individual effort but the rather nature of communication.
Communication is centered on the means to fulfill a predetermined purpose, such as conveying one’s business or answering a question.
Therefore, subtle behaviors, the surrounding ambiance, and the mind movement present in the situation that are not explicitly expressed in the communication are always missing.
Wisdom tells us that the heart of communication is the transmission of intent, even though that is not always the case in practice.
Whether online or offline, written communication with others involves barring detailed information besides the meaning and expression of the written word.
In the margin surrounding the exchange of words lies the potential to create a meaningful connection with others.
Misunderstandings often emerge when substantial margins are omitted during interactions with other parties, resulting in common expressions such as “I didn’t mean what I said.”
Our minds become disconnected, and the relationship crumbles: “I have nowhere to go,” “I am stuck,” “every word makes me angry.” This is something we all experience in our daily lives.
In today’s society, where communication via the internet and smartphones is a significant part of daily life, it is imperative to develop a concrete solution to this problem that anyone can rely on.
Empatheme is a system that encapsulates written communication with subtle connotations surrounding the words and also enables the act of sharing practice.
When we fully share the connotations, we can nurture a state of comfort and empathy. You connect with others by heart when sensing meaning in the area surrounding what you say and hear.
Empatheme is a communication platform that cultivates meaningful connections with yourself and those who you share your practice with.
A larger community of people that use and engage with Empatheme will emerge and help pave the way for cross-sectional research using Empatheme data.
Concept of Empatheme – How it Works
The concept of Empatheme began in the communication between humans and physical objects. Empathic Computing Methods & Systems (a group of patents granted in Japan, the U.S., and Europe) were developed based on the empathic view that humans and things can work together closely.
By nature, a computer is a machine that outputs answers by inputting information predetermined by the human user; there is no output without information entered. Imagine cutting off the connotative space where human subtleties are notably expressed. In such an event, the computer will also fail to comprehend the subtle mind.
Empatheme overcomes such limitations by reversing the ordinary of thinking: establishing the concept on the margins in the first place. By creating a space to interact with things (objects), the connotative information in the surrounding where you vocalize a string of words is captured in a unitized and structured manner.
Empatheme extracts connotative information including subconscious behavior patterns (non-linguistic information), tone of voice, rhythm (prosody, paralinguistic information), surrounding sounds, and daily iterations (contextual information) in a meaningful way and projects them into an intuitive and visual representation. (see illustration above)
When using the Empatheme app, the iterative output of the “movement of your subconscious mind ” simultaneously occurs. Even the slightest event in the flow of time at that place becomes an essential piece of the connotative space representing the subtle state of your mind.
An empatheme is an amalgamation of digital data extracted from the margins of speech. When used to reflect upon yourself, the empathemes become a medium to cultivate a heart-to-heart connections with those who walk the path of practice with you.
Mi Pra: Practice Cultivating Yourself with Empatheme
Mi Pra provides a space and time to make small changes.
Sit quietly and let the empathemes flow. Draw a circle.
Vocalization in calmness shapes your mind and a few minutes of your time becomes powerful.
Create a space in your daily life to reflect, give form to your voice, and leave words you can retouch later.
Each word only lasts a few seconds. In the brief passage of time surrounding a string of a vocal expression, there lies a concealed yet precious piece of information that truly captures yourself in your subconscious or subtle state of mind.
The Empalet, delivered to your Empatheme app every morning, serves as a guide to your daily routine and brings rhythm to your life. The stories you can read in a few minutes contain visual content that may intrigue your mind.
Ei Pra: Learn to Practice English with Empatheme
Ei Pra (See Video)
The Core Challenge of English Learning
Recently, learning English by listening to native speakers and reading out aloud has been introduced. Even so, many learners feel that they cannot listen, speak, or more generally use English even if they have knowledge of vocabulary and grammar.
Why is this?
The essence of language acquisition is not “knowing” but rather “being able to employ” what you know. The biggest problem with conventional English learning is that it only leads to an accumulation of knowledge not directly connected to your own life. There is an immense lack of practices to help acquire the connection, iteration, and continuation essential for learning.
The study method of “learning by being taught” employed by a plethora of teaching materials and convenient app functions lacks the fundamental perspective of outputting and acquiring knowledge by yourself.
By merely memorizing involved words alone, without practicing connecting them to yourself and knowing what’s needed, your learning remains in the dark and will not get any easier.
It is critical to change the way of thinking, to reflect upon your practices to see how you can improve and feel a change in your practice.
Connotative Information of Practice Creates a New Path for English Learning
Ei Pra is a service that maximizes your practice – helping you continuously and constantly output what you input and input what you output. It accompanies you all the way to carry your practice habits into the future.
By measuring your practice that contains not only your vocal expressions but also rich connotative information surrounding your action, Empatheme can give effective feedback periodically so that you can visibly see the tangible progress you are making.
Furthermore, the Empatheme data enables tutors to understand the learner’s behavioral characteristics and state of practice. Interaction between the learner and the tutors grows to fruition through the pinpointed personalized advice based on a combination of insightful experience and scientific data.
Ei Pra is a learning program that revolutionalizes the conventional learning method and measures physical output to help one acquire the form, skills, and sense to use English in practice.
Ei Pra is a unique and innovative communication platform that allows learners and native English speakers to deepen their mutual learning by sharing their practices through Empatheme.
About Empatheme Foundation
Our mission is to spread the practice of helping each other around the world through “Empatheme, a communication platform that extracts and harnesses the potential inherent in human beings. We aim to create a world where those who use practice and support your practice can walk side-by-side with each other.
Empatheme: A word combining empathy and -eme (small unit). Empatheme is a unit of interaction captured in a sequence, subtly resonating in real-time on the Empatheme application.
Empatheme website provides an environment and concrete methods that inspires change.
Inspire Change (See Video at Empatheme Website)