📡 A post-human world? Hmm...
Welcome to another Pulse!
And another big welcome to the new members of the Pulse family! Hope you read and enjoy every Pulse! Sorry for going MIA last week! I was just a bit sick, thanks for asking - a few of you who actually noticed 😁
Now, let’s read…
- Ben
🧠 Insights
Humanoid robots are here! - Credit: Franck V. on Unsplash
Uncanny! Is this humanoid robot a curiosity, or a preview of a post-human world?
The Japanese engineer Hiroshi Ishiguro has spent much of his life building robots to simulate human behaviours as closely as possible. And with Erica, a female humanoid that Ishiguro created with scientists from the universities of Kyoto University and Osaka, and the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR), he believes he’s built the ‘most human-like, autonomous android in this world’.
Read more and watch the video on Aeon.
Erica: Man Made on Vimeo
📊 Statistics
Average daily time spent on following the media - Credit: GWI
Competing for Consumer Attention
The pressure on linear TV isn’t just coming from streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. Both are part of a wider competition for the consumer’s free time with other media formats.
Consumers are now clocking up an average of around 2:20 hours per day on social media, rising to around 3 hours among 16-24s. Online and print press, games consoles, music streaming and broadcast radio collectively constitute around 5 hours of a consumer’s day. That’s not including the hour and a quarter spent watching online #TV, and the 6 ¾ hours spent online more broadly on a daily basis.
Consumer attention in this crowded environment has become harder to maintain.
Linear TV, does however, have a lot to boast about here. With the exception of social media, linear TV captures the largest share of daily media time among consumers, standing at 18%, significantly above online TV’s 12%. And considering social media engagement happens frequently throughout the day whereas TV engagement is mostly in long durations, that’s an impressive feat.
Read more on GlobalWebIndex.
Microsoft under Satya Nadella - Credit: Statista
Microsoft’s Share Price Tripled Under Satya Nadella
Five years ago, Satya Nadella took over as CEO at Microsoft, following in the footsteps of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. It wasn’t an easy situation to come in for Nadella, considering that Microsoft had missed the transition to mobile devices, Windows 8 had flopped miserably and the PC market had started its decline, putting Microsoft’s core business, Windows, into question.
Back in 2014, most people given the choice to invest $1,000 in either Microsoft or Apple, probably would have invested in the latter, considering the huge success that Microsoft’s old foe was having with its mobile devices, most importantly the iPhone. And yet, here we are, five years into Nadella’s tenure and Microsoft is not only the most valuable public company on the planet, it has also outperformed Apple over the past five years.
Read more on Statista.
📱 Tools & Apps
Sip 2.0: A better way to collect, organise & share your colours. (Free trial)
Bring: A collaborative shopping list app [iOS | Android | Alexa | Google Assistant]
🎮 Fun Stuff
Things change…
📮 In Just a few Years...
And now, can you honestly say that you haven’t done this - ever?!
Sad, but true? Or just wrong? - Credit: Reddit/u/BUTTRESS_OF_WINDSOR
This is not goodbye...
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