Technology & Society

Why intelligent agents could free us from information overload

Posted by Alex on 7 Nov, 2011 in Articles, Technology & Society | 2 comments

The launch of the iPhone 4S with Siri, the first large-scale consumer “intelligent agent” technology marks the beginning of a new form of computer interface – computers we can talk to, and ask what we want. Of course, there is a long way to go, but it is clear this is a new paradigm.

I’ll be writing more about Siri and its potential in future posts, but this seems a good time to publish the following essay, which I wrote a year ago for the forthcoming e-book “The future we deserve” being curated by Vinay Gupta. All the short essays for the book explain a point of view about what we (humanity) deserve in order to build a better future for ourselves.

Ten reasons Google+ deserves to beat Facebook

Posted by Alex on 10 Jul, 2011 in Technology & Society | 7 comments

Last week Google launched Google+, a new social platform which many are comparing to Facebook. It is quite different from Facebook or Twitter, though it is clearly inspired by both. If it is to gain broad acceptance and not fade away like Orkut, Buzz and Wave–Google’s past attempts to build a social network–then it needs to be more than just “good enough”. It has to wow its critics. The good news is, Google+ seems to be doing just that. Here’s ten reasons why it deserves success: