A team of German researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany studied how humans interact with robots. In a paper published in PLOS ONE – they offered the finding that people who were asked to turn a robot off were more likely to leave it on if the robot pleaded with them to “live.” The conclusion
Continue reading »
Earlier this week the US government had to officially ask people to stop jumping out of moving cars to dance in the streets in response to a viral dance challenge for one of Drake’s songs. About the same time I first read this story, for some reason another story and video about how you can
Continue reading »
British supermarkets are quickly becoming the unexpected pioneers in adding more empathy into retail. In January, Tesco introduced a “slow checkout line” for customers who have dementia or otherwise need more time to check out. This week, Morrisons, another British supermarket chain, announced it would have “quiet hours” to help autistic shoppers to have a
Continue reading »
Back when I worked at a marketing agency I remember those times when I would see a campaign so inspired it would immediately make me wish I had thought of it. This new effort from FCB New York is one of those envy-inducing efforts. The goal is to position LG TVs as the ones that
Continue reading »
Facebook recently added a feature to help you track how much time you spend on the platform. Instagram will now show a checkmark when you are done scrolling through your friends’ updates from the past two days. A recent NY Times feature even proposed that this might be the summer of “JOMO” (the joy of
Continue reading »
A little over two years ago, Pokemon Go was everywhere. People walked down the street glued to their phones. And then one day it all seemed to stop. Yet as this article from WIRED explores, the game is still dominating. Who is still playing? As writer Brian Barrett notes: “The game attracts proportionally more older
Continue reading »
What do men think it means to be a man today in the era of #metoo? This is a question that has been receiving a lot of attention recently. Data analytics site FiveThirtyEight.com commissioned a study that found plenty of fascinating conclusions, including that more than 75% of men don’t believe there are any advantages today to being
Continue reading »
In a world where everyone is constantly bombarded with examples of how the grass is greener somewhere else, earning true employee loyalty may soon be harder than ever.
Continue reading »
“A titanic amount of our economy is presently bullshit, and we’re working crazy hours to ensure that all the bullshit gets done.” This review of the newly released book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber looks at some of the themes from the research of the author and why there are so many people doing jobs
Continue reading »
Imagine learning a new skill such as playing the piano or reading braille in as little as an hour. That may soon be a reality according to this story which introduces a concept called “passive haptic learning” where people were taught the finger patterns to play a song on the piano simply by wearing a
Continue reading »
