Robotics guru Masahiro Mori’s “uncanny valley” theory posits that as automated activity increasingly mimics human behavior there is a point just before the mimicked behavior is completely accepted where it triggers a strong negative emotional response. As our personal and business online lives become more dependent on an Internet that tries to divine our wants and needs and as we generate more and more information about our actions and personal preferences I think we are all collectively on the verge ... Read more

The buzz about crowdsourcing continues to get louder every day. The crowd can now, it seems, handle a range of tasks including journalism, design, and even filmmaking. If you’ve been asked to look into crowdsourcing as a way to stretch your budget and haven’t tried it before, however, you’ve probably asked yourself whether the results of crowdsourced projects are close enough in terms of quality to justify the pursuit of the cost-savings they can potentially represent. Put another way: “Are ... Read more