“Either we have to go or we have to change.” That’s the way the social and ethical thinker Jeremy Rifkin puts it, and considering our unhealthy dependence on fossil fuels for everything we do, it’s hard to argue with him.Enter empathy, which has shaped our development and our societies since we lived on the sahara. Nation-states allowed us to extend those connections beyond the family and the village. The internet seems to be doing the same thing. In this video by the Royal Society for the Arts, he wonders: is empathy scalable?The implication is that technologies that let us see what’s happening right now to other people far away from us help to expand our perspective. But how do they effect our affective actions? And in what ways might technology be numbing, not assisting, our ability to empathize with others, from chat buddies to earthquake victims?If you need more than a whiteboard animation, Rifkin’s longer presentation to the RSA is here: