Boxes with Personality

 Does personality buy you something with speaking devices?   With Robots?   Maybe, sometimes, in the right environment.  Its been tried many times.   Alexa does a bit, but not enough. A stronger conversational flow, with active memory would help.  Clear value goals.  Here an automated talking box on wheels from Norway makes the claim, for in hospital systems.  

An Automated Box on Wheels—with Personality   By Norwegian SciTech News   May 17, 2021

People find boxy talking robots humorous and engaging, which may make robotic technology more acceptable in everyday life, according to new research.

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) scientists studied robotic Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) deployed at St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim, Norway, which were equipped with voices with a distinctive local dialect, rather than a generic Norwegian voice.

NTNU's Roger A. Soraa said, "We found that these robots, which were not created to be social robots, were actually given social qualities by the humans relating to them."

Soraa said this quality helps people accept the robots, which he described as "emissaries of technologies."   ... 

This robot transports trolleys around St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim, Norway. When people hear it speak, they perceive it as a kind of funny animal-like creature, rather than a robot.

From Norwegian SciTech News

Why Computing Belongs within the Social Sciences

Thoughtful piece in the ACM.  Full text at the link. While computers started from technology, it has evolved unpredictably into something also very deeply and even alarmingly sociological.    Read the key insights below.

Why Computing Belongs Within the Social Sciences
By Randy Connolly
Communications of the ACM, August 2020, Vol. 63 No. 8, Pages 54-59  10.1145/3383444

On October 23, 2008, Alan Greenspan, the Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, was testifying before Congress in the immediate aftermath of the September 2008 financial crash. Undoubtedly the high point of the proceedings occurred when Representative Henry Waxman pressed the Chair to admit "that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right," to which Greenspan admitted "Absolutely, precisely."17 Fast forward 10 years to another famous mea culpa moment in front of Congress, that of Mark Zuckerberg on April 11, 2018. In light of both the Cambridge Analytica scandal and revelations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, Zuckerberg also admitted to wrong: "It's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy." ... '

Key Insights:

Social Networks and Innovations

An interesting view of how social networks influence elements of opinion.   In particular addressing the kinds of innovations.

How Social Networks Contribute to the Spread of Unproven Innovations

Wharton's Valentina Assenova discusses her research on social networks and the adoption of complex innovations.

There are some new products and services that are very obviously good  — a cure for a deadly disease, for example, or some other type of medical innovation. But other innovations have value that is more uncertain, such as an unproven technology. In her latest research paper, Wharton management professor Valentina Assenova examines the role of social networks, both online and offline, in the spread of these complex innovations. Her paper is titled, “Modeling the Diffusion of Complex Innovations as a Process of Opinion Formation Through Social Networks.” She joined Knowledge@Wharton to discuss her findings about which kinds of innovations spread more quickly than others in different networks, the role of influencers, and what that means for entrepreneurs.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Knowledge@Wharton: What was the inspiration for this research?

Valentina Assenova: The inspiration for this research was looking at the spread of microfinance. Microfinance is one of those innovations that is not obviously good or bad, and there is a lot of mixed evidence around whether or not it is actually beneficial for women, whether it improves welfare and so forth. But it was something that really got me intrigued about the role of public opinions and of social networks — in the sense of people who you talk to for advice, for help in making a decision — and how some of these complex innovations spread.    ... " 

Charlene Li Looks at Groundswell

Happened on this, interesting to see some predictions of the future and how they played out.

Reflecting on 10 Years of Groundswell and What To Do Next by Charlene Li

10 years ago, my co-author Josh Bernoff and I released our first book, “Groundswell: Living in a World Transformed by Social Technologies”. On this anniversary, I wanted to reflect on what our expectations were when we published that work, what has changed, and what has not. Josh has shared his thoughts as well.

Our Expectations
When we started working on the book in early 2007, we could see the makings of a revolution, even through many people around us considered social media to be a fad, something that the young and crazy did. We could see that social would challenge our conventional definitions of relationships, hierarchies, control, permission, and privacy. The things that business and society held as true, sacred, and unchanging would be toppled. Hence, the need for a book to explain what social would mean and very importantly, what to do with it. ... " 

Infrastructure of Social Media

Anil Dash on what I would call a rough classification of the infrastructure of social media. Disagree with some of it, like analytics, but its a reasonable take.  Talks about what has been lost,  embedded in other things, and taken over by giants.   Having been involved with this world from the beginning its a great reminder of what was.  Less so, architecture or the specifics of what could be.

The lost infrastructure of social media.
More than a decade ago, the earliest era of blogging provided a set of separate but related technologies that helped the nascent form thrive. Today, most have faded away and been forgotten, but new incarnations of these features could still be valuable. ... " 

Promoting Scientific Papers to the Public

Promoting, and often translating scientific papers and ideas to the more general public.  Its a little like what this kind of blog does.  And what I did in various enterprises.   Help semi-technical management understand the value of new technologies.  

In Nature:  ‘Kudos’ promises to help scientists promote their papers to new audiences ... Increasingly popular social-media tool says it can maximize reach and impact of research. .... "  By Jeffrey Perkel

Building Morality into Machines

Remember when this was discussed during the last emergence of smart machines.   The problem has not gone away.   Good detailed piece with a number of useful case descritpions.  Note the decision aspect. Decisions need to be improved under another set of complex constraints.   In the CACM: 

Building Morality into Machines  By Samuel Greengard
" .... In the past, there was not a strong need to have technology ethics embedded into machines, because most systems had merely automated tasks, or operated under direct human control, explains John P. Sullins, a professor of philosophy at the Center for Ethics Value and Society at Sonoma State University in California. As autonomous machines step, roll, and fly into our lives, however, there is a growing need to draw on elements of psychology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, theology, actuarial science, political policy, and law to guide actions and machine behavior. This translates into hierarchies or scoring systems that sort through real-world events and guide automated decision-making.  .... " 

VR as the Next Social Network

In CWorld: VR as social network. I mentioned this in a recent post that talked about using it to better understand social behavior.  It has been been mentioned by some players as the ultimate interface.   But I did hear the same thing mentioned for virtual worlds like Second Life.  I say, not in its current form.

PureMatter Marketing

Newly discovered:  PureMatter.

" ... Since PureMatter was founded in 2002, the world has changed. The economy tanked. Technology exploded. Expectations keep increasing. Consumers have never been so connected – and there’s no end in sight. Today, we’re excited to be leading the charge toward humanizing business, being led by Bryan Kramer, the instigator of the #H2H movement. (Kramer's Shareology book) 

As marketers, we use our smartest thinking to stay ahead of these shifts. Our process helps our clients find the very best energy in their marketing that attracts the right customers, and then keeps them there over time. Energy creates momentum. Extreme heat. And nuclear results.

Our process is simple. We leverage technology, structure and methodology to run our business. Smart thinking to drive our strategy. And curiosity and humor to manifest creativity. It keeps us efficient, focused and disciplined, and keeps clients coming back for more. Simplifying the complex is our specialty.

We’re pattern and trend-spotters. Scientists of life. And purveyors of cracking what makes marketing work today. Our formula’s working, and have picked up numerous local, regional and National awards along the way.  ... "   (See also their blog)  @PureMatter 

First Solve the Human Problem

Don't just send Technology to Solve a Human Problem.   In Bain Insights.  " ..... Andreas Dullweber explains what makes a strong customer experience .. "

John Cleese has a Message for Geeks

Hardly a supporter of social media, but humorist John Cleese makes the case that the social is much harder than the technological.   Video.

Linkedin Buys Social Knowledge Company Refresh

Linkedin needs better under interfaces and user models as well.   They are acquiring a social knowledge startup: 

" ... In a move that could yield even more automated suggestions and tips for LinkedIn users, the professional network has acquired California startup Refresh, the maker of an app that gathers news and insights about participants in meetings. ... 
Launched three years ago, Refresh is designed to be a "digital briefing book" that can call up online information related to people that users are scheduled to meet. The information can be anything from blog posts, news articles or Facebook posts to personal notes or favorite sports teams. ... "  

SNCR Spring Newsletter

Had a long time fellow connection to SNCR.  @SNCR  The Society for New Communications Research.  They also have interesting research going on.  This latest newsletter includes statistics on the changing use of blogs and other social media.  I had mentioned their finding that Linkedin continues to surge strongly as a broadly used social media.

Social Graphs for Business

Starting to think more rigorously about the definition and delivery of occupations.   It is natural to think about work that has already been done to understand the formal work and social interactions of people in their jobs.  In the HBR:

" .... If you’re a savvy social media user then you’ve already figured out that the knowledge a tool like Facebook is able to gather about your social connections is not only valuable to you. For you, Facebook’s ability to depict your network of friends and the varying strengths of those relationships supports all your mutual information sharing. For others — third parties — this “social graph” makes it possible to make personalized recommendations to you, and everyone else. For example, TripAdvisor leverages Facebook’s social graph to ensure that, when you are looking for reviews of hotels, restaurants, and so forth, any reviews posted by people you know appear right at the top.

For the social network companies, it didn’t take long to realize that the latter form of value creation should be the real focus of their business models. Early ventures like MySpace primarily focused on the social activity among their account holders, working to provide better tools to help them manage their relationships. Today’s social networks see social tools not as their end product but as a means for acquiring data. Facebook, in particular, saw the big opportunity in the “information exhaust” produced by all that user activity to produce a higher-level intelligence layer that would be useful to other businesses. Having graphed its users’ relationships and interactions, it could offer anyone else interested in those users the insight to reach them with highly targeted services. ... " 

Forecasting the Flu

In the CACM:  We did sensor work some time ago that addressed bioterror forecasting.   This is related work that leverages social networks.   " ... A research team at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) says it has refined and improved the predictions of Google Flu Trends (GFT).

The researchers report using social network analysis and combining the power of GFT's big data with traditional flu-monitoring data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ... " 

UMass Report on Use of Social Media by Fortune 500

Today attended the yearly presentation of UMass Dartmouth  Prof Nora Barnes, commissioned by SNCR, where I am a senior Fellow.  Lots of fascinating numbers about the use of all common forms of social media by the Fortune 500.  Most interesting this year was the inclusion of Linkedin as a 'regular' social media.   See the UMass site for this and other studies they have done.   (Update): Here are the slides.   (Update) Recording of Webinar.

Comparing the Social Landscape in 2014

A one page landscape infographic view of the eight most common types of social media in 2014. Nicely done, but specifics in this space do change quickly.  Includes useful statistics about usage trends as well.  I find that people know about the 1-2 things they use, but little outside of that.  This provides a good comparative look at social effectiveness .

Why Academics use Social Media

A lengthy Nature report with many statistics.   Some surprising. I would further like to see why people outside, or just slightly outside a particular academic or technical field, use Social Media.  I frequently find myself in that situation.  Wanting to efficiently follow developments.  'Lurking' as it is sometimes called.  Terse communications can make that easier.

Social Hives for the Supply Chain

Concept term I had not heard of: 

" .... The age-old problem of disconnection in the supply chain can be eased through the use of social media, argues Tony Martins. He recommends powerful but somewhat informal "hives": "A hive is not a functional group. A universal principle I've learned over the years is that, generally speaking, collaboration isn't needed within a functional group; it is needed across skill sets. So, you should not create functional hives," Martins advises ... " 

ROI for Social Media

From the earliest days of social media, there was always an argument about their ROI.  The answer was often that they were a cost rather than a measurable value.  Not in general a good answer, but allowable for innovation budget work for the time being.  There is lots in that portfolio though, and it should be reviewed often.  I had noticed that the ROI question, though posed, was not settled, and had heard less about it lately.   But now see a discussion posed in RetailLink.   Good start.