Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 56
July 26, 2020
World Population Will Decline Starting In 2064, Shifting the Current World Order
After peaking at 9.7 billion people in the year 2064, researchers believe that the world’s population will begin to decline. The primary reason cited is more empowerment of women/girls and widely available contraception. The researchers go on to talk about the major impact this is likely to have on economies around the world, and particularly the balance of power as current “third world” nations will be the ones who likely have the highest percentage of productive young people working.
Still, th...
July 25, 2020
How Ultra-Niche Phones Are Going Tiny, Rugged and Bringing Back Keyboards
Each time a “game-changing” new mobile phone is announced with a camera that has incrementally more megapixels, it sparks another moment of tech envy. Every few months we are forced to regret the decision to buy our own inferior phones that seem nowhere near as awesome as the new one that makes our previous version obsolete. But what about those people who want something besides the best HD camera and screen resolution with a sub-par phone?
It turns out there may be a market for more unusual pho...
July 23, 2020
5 Virtual Presentation Lessons From Comic-Con
I have wanted to go to the Comic-Con event for years, but never quite managed to make it. This year, I finally can – because the entire event is happening virtually. It is happening all weekend, and there is already an excellent panel online you can watch on how teachers are using comic books to help students learn.
Over the past few days, there have been panels on “causeplay,” the future of gaming and a Star Trek panel featuring a table read of the season finale from Star Trek Discovery. It wa...
July 22, 2020
Trader Joe’s and the Slow Death of Brand Personality
I believe brands should act in human ways and have a personality. In fact, I wrote a book on it more than a decade ago called Personality Not Included, and I have long used Trader Joe’s as an example of how to effectively create and share a personality. From their unique “Fearless Flyers” to the way they have retitled ethnic foods with slight variations of their brand name, I enjoy the way they bring their brand to life. This week, thanks to pressure from an online petition, they will remove th...
July 21, 2020
How Researchers Trained and Created AI With Psycopathic Tendencies
What happens when you train an AI algorithm only with murderous images from horror films or macabre photos from the Internet? A seriously disturbed AI, as researchers at the MIT Media Lab discovered. The AI, named “Norman” after the lead character from the horror film “Psycho,” reacted disturbingly in image association tests and exhibited severe tendencies toward seeing the world as more aggressive, violent and negative – no matter what it was presented with afterwards. It’s an excellent reminde...
July 20, 2020
The Truth About Fox News: It Isn’t Fake.
Calling Fox News fake is a common theme among the people in my social media circles, but I have long been curious about their reporting and why so many people seem so deeply influenced by it. I’m a frequent reader of their stories and consistently have it as part of my overall media diet even though I often disagree with the stories there.
This week, I did a little experiment over a two day period to capture multiple headlines to see if I could identify a theme or pattern. There clearly was. In...
July 18, 2020
5 Ways To Conquer Zoom Fatigue
We are tired of Zoom.
It’s not just Zoom, but the idea of being on video all day that is straining our relationship with the same video technology that once seemed like it might offer us a salvation from the isolation of working remotely. The fatigue is predictable, and growing. There are also some several solutions that offer insight into how we can all deal with this challenge. Here are a few that emerged just over this past week:
1. Make the Experience Better
July 17, 2020
How Afrofuturists Think Different and Why the Questions They Ask Matter
“Futurists labor over questions about the nature of Android consciousness and empathy. Afrofuturists ask how race might be wired into Android consciousness and whether the android world might be as divided as ours is.”
I admit, before reading this article on Afrofuturism from WIRED, I hadn’t considered some of these questions related to the future — and I’ve read quite a bit about it. This was a blind spot for me and this excellently argued article helped me to realize it and articulated exactly...
May 26, 2020
How To Conquer Loneliness & Isolation With Remote Work
Last week I attended a virtual book launch event hosted by Cadre where former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy spoke about his new book Togetherness. The premise of the book is that loneliness is an underappreciated public health epidemic – a particularly relevant topic today at a time when many people have been forced into working isolation and offices have been closed.
It is a topic that I talk about in my latest guide on how to be effective while working remotely and doing virtual presentations a...
May 21, 2020
The Non-Obvious Insights Show – Episode #218
It’s been a busy week with my last night’s inaugural edition of my new Non-Obvious Virtual Summit which focused on the Future of Learning (watch the replay here). And a double header today with a SXSW Session virtual keynote at Noon EST, followed by another episode of my new Non-Obvious Insights Show (video below). There are some good ones from the pizza shop owner who made money by ordering underpriced pizzas from his own restaurant through Doordash and the surprising truth about air pollution....
