Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 62

Why Rage Isn’t As Useful As Anger

The truth can seem hard to find these days. One of my biggest challenges in putting this weekly email together to share with you is finding some perspective, particularly when it comes to Trump. As you might expect, many of the news sources that I subscribe to and use to compile this report are far too fixated on Trump dutifully reporting stories that stoke the exact outrage that benefits only him. Yet a big part of what I teach in my talks and workshops is the need for being more open minded...

Amy Winehouse And How Dead Artists Might Come Back On Tour As Holograms

This week the father of Amy Winehouse announced a world tour in 2019 featuring a “hologram” of his daughter on stage. A digital avatar of Winehouse, who died in 2011 from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, will “perform” some of her most popular songs in a concert accompanied by a live band, real backup singers and lots of special effects. In a world where thousands of people are already paying to see concerts of a completely fabricated digital personality, it’s not a leap to think they migh...

Do Fantasy Sports Dehumanize Athletes And Make Us Worse People?

As Washington Redskin’s running back Chris Thompson shares, “Fantasy football, it makes us not human. It’s almost like people think we’re just robots out there, performing for you.” In a sport sometimes described as our modern day gladiator ring due to how often the sport causes long term inury and even death among its participants, Thompson has a fair complaint. Back in the time of the gladiators, when people saw those competitors as less than human — it wasn’t long before they started seein...

Most Online Content Is Crap. How Will We Decide What To Save?

This week the Library of Congress mapped out an ambitious vision to expand its collection of digital content and broaden access to all of it. On the surface, cataloging all of this data seems like the ultimate impossible task because of how exponentially it is growing. It’s hard to imagine how any one group will be able to make sense of it all.

Yet this week there were also stories of a tool developed at MIT that can help automatically erase anyone or anything from a photo and Dropbox introdu...

How Black Mirror Might Predict The Future Of Storytelling

This week I made my annual trek to Snug Harbor on Staten Island for the Future of Storytelling conference. I make it a point to come every year, and this year I was lucky to moderate a session with Jill Cress, the CMO of National Geographic, who is helping the brand move from “reverence to relevance.”

At the event, there was a combination of fascinating performances from a rapper about consciousness, a virtual baby simulator, a futuristic Irish dancing troupe, and all sorts of other artists d...

How To Separate Meaningful Data From Quantified Bullshit

Last year I got my test results from the 23andMe genetic testing and found it to be fascinatingly useless. The numbers told me I was 99% South Asian and offered head-scratching “insights” like that I have an “average chance of hating chewing sounds.” This week an excerpt from a new book called A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived devastatingly refers to these tests as “genetic astrology” and debunks the science behind them. It’s a compelling read and effectively raises a red flag on the...

Why The Future of Work Should Be Jobs Humans Actually Want To Do

On September 13th Time magazine ran a cover story on the plight of underpaid teachers in America. A few days later, an Amazon worker published an expose about inhumane working conditions and low pay in Amazon’s warehouses, while Bloomberg reported that the retailer is considering opening 3,000 cashierless stores by 2021. To cap off the week, the World Economic Forum published a report that predicted robot workers are going to steal 75 million jobs by 2025.

It was a worrying week if you’re a h...

Is the Body Positive Movement Really A Good Thing?

Today there are plenty of examples of campaigns to help people become comfortable with their own bodies. Yet some have criticized this body positive movement as perhaps keeping people from admitting they are obese. One Newsweek article worried that people may use it as an excuse to justify their weight.

This movement has also gone far beyond only body weight. American Apparel has created a line of clothing for any of 27 different skin tones, and there is a lingerie brand focused on women who...

Why No Branding May Be The Next Marketing Trend

Last summer comedian and actress Mindy Kaling did a series of ads for McDonald’s with a curious omission – she never mentioned the brand. Instead, they would use phrases like “the place where Coke tastes so good” to allude to the brand. It was an interesting strategy and turned a few eyebrows. This week, Heineken launched an entire campaign intentionally omitting a tagline – and entire initiatives like Brandless are redefining traditional branding so deeply that they are even causing some to...

What You Can Learn About Storytelling From The Movie “Searching”

How many times would you watch a movie? When it comes to the hot new thriller Searching from first-time director Aneesh Chaganty, you will need more than a few because of the number of easter eggs and elaborate side storylineshidden in the movie.

The film is about a frantic Dad, played by John Cho, searching social media for clues about his missing daughter. Many of the shots in the film are from the viewpoint of the screen, which created an early challenge of what content to use for all thos...