Voice Interfaces Are Starting To Take Over Our Lives

“Mumbling ‘buy more paper towels’ into the air in your kitchen is about as frictionless as a user experience can get—compared to opening up Amazon on your computer or phone, searching for paper towels, adding them to your cart, and checking out. That makes Alexa—the machine-borne personality that lives inside Echo devices—the ultimate salesperson, and she’s just getting started.”

A Debate About Diversity In The Museum World

What portion of the museum field is essentially hostile to ideas like intersectionality, as opposed to merely being intimidated by them? Does AAM have the institutional will to enact policies that support expanding diversity? If that will is absent, what does it take to move large organizations like AAM to become catalysts for profound change in the field? What would the field look like if they did, and, ultimately, how do we deal with these differing, sometimes oppositional viewpoints?

Do Movie Box Office Boycotts Work?

What extent do these buzzy boycotts actually affect the spending habits of the general moviegoer? Users of Twitter, where protest hashtags are predominant, reflect only 23 percent of all Internet users, many of them young, affluent, and living in urban areas, according to the Pew Research Center. Moviegoers, meanwhile, are a very diverse bunch, spanning all ages, geographic locations, and household incomes.

Voice-Recognition Technology Will Kill ‘All Things Considered’, Says Ex-NPR Exec

Steve Lickteig: “Here’s what I think the future sounds like: You will get in your car and say, ‘Play my news briefing, plus all of last night’s baseball scores, including highlights from the Yankees game. Oh, and give me last week’s Vows column from the New York Times.’ Then, like magic, your audio system will assemble this playlist. That news briefing you asked for? It will come from sources you pre-selected, places like NPR and news organizations yet to be created.”