Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 77

How To Break Up With Your Bank Over Ethical Differences

In a perfect example of Passive Loyalty (a 2017 trend from Non-Obvious), this article on discusses how to break up with your bank. While changing banks is notoriously inconvenient, the author of the piece was inspired to do so because of ethical differences with his bank (Wells Fargo) and its support of the Dakota pipeline. This consumer empowerment and the desire to do business with brands that align with our beliefs is among one of the most disruptive elements of the millennial mindset, and...

Your Next Camera Will Retouch Your Pictures While You Take Them

Starting with a set of 5,000 images that were retouched by five different photographers, Google and MIT built an algorithm that can automatically retouch a photo WHILE you take it. In a world already filled with “photoshopped” images which distort reality, advancements like this have the potential to further blur the line between real and fake and raise some interesting questions about the “truth” behind images. If my phone automatically retouches my selfie to make me look better, is that a f...

Chinese Mall Installs “Husband Pods” For Bored Spouses

The bored husband at a shopping mall is one of the most common stereotypes of suburbia and now a Chinese gaming company has a solution that is rapidly going viral. The so-called “husband pod” features seat massages, retro video games and virtual reality experiences. While there are no plans to expand this outside of China at the moment, it’s easy to imagine this being popular just about anywhere … and not just among husbands either.

Read the full story on CNN >

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The Future of Elevators Could Go Sideways

What if elevators went sideways? They might soon thanks to a new system invented and being tested by German elevator producer ThyssenKrupp which aims to get rid of cables altogether and build elevators more like magnetic levitation trains, which are common in Japan and China. The idea would allow people in a tall tower to go sideways to a nearby tower instead of having to go down and then back up again. The idea, if it takes off, could be interesting as a way to solve short commute traffic ch...

New Survey Finds Recent MBA Grads Don’t Want To Work On Wall Street

A new survey shows that jobs outside of Wall Street are increasingly being preferred by MBA graduates as just 19% of respondents selected Wall Street as their top employment choice – a drop of 7 percent from last year and the lowest level in the 8 year history of the survey. While the survey only included 200 students, it does raise the possibility that the growing shift toward purpose driven workplace cultures and valuing things other than the biggest paycheck are increasingly influencing wh...

6 Shifts In How Data Is Transforming Healthcare

The new PSFK Future of Health report is out and a central theme is that data is driving personalization of diagnosis, treatment and overall clinical intelligence. The idea of “cloud diagnosis” for example illustrates the power of tapping a vast reserve of knowledge to properly diagnose patients. Another is the ability to offer preemptive education to prevent illnesses – which the report calls “Omni-Care.” For a summary of other insights from the report and details on how to purchase it, follo...

Have An Accent? It Might Help You Get Your Next Job

AI voice-assistants have long had difficulty understanding foreign accents, but now Amazon may be taking steps to address this frequent issue. In Australia, the brand is hiring “a linguist with Australian background” to join their team. The same may be happening in other places around the world as these linguists can listen to the language and annotate everything from word pronunciation to pauses between words to help artificial intelligence understand all kinds of accents. Perhaps even inclu...

Trend Watch – The Rise Of Media Escapism

Is it ever ok to take a break from your outrage and the 24-hour news cycle? We all should hope so. Yet taking this kind of break is leading to a widespread side effect: guilt. That time you spend watching The Bachelor or staying home from the latest angry protest march is time where you’re not impacting the world. In this well argued article, Washington Post writer Emily Yahr argues that we need this escape from media in order to maintain our perspective. “Media escapism” may be the only way...

MIT Shares Theory On Why Some Neighborhoods Evolve

Why do some neighborhoods evolve and gentrify while others don’t? This fascinating story is about a joint research program between MIT and Harvard to identify what causes urban change. Tested with five American cities, this system quantifies the physical improvement or deterioration of neighborhoods. The early results are already surprising: “Contrary to popular belief, raw income levels and housing prices do not predict change in a neighborhood. Instead, it had more to do with other factors....

Fully Automated Toothbrush Helps Lazy People Be Lazier

If you are one of those people who thinks that brushing your teeth properly takes too long, this new product will help. A startup called Amabrush has launched a toothbrush that will clean all your teeth in 10 seconds. It looks like a futuristic gag used to keep criminals quiet, but watching how this works it’s easy to imagine that this is one type of household space where we will see lots of innovation and new solutions in the future.

Read the full story on Futurism >

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