Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 7

Doing things for fun is making a comeback. That may seem like an odd statement, but there is a time in many people’s lives when everything feels too busy to indulge in hobbies. When we get that inevitable question of what we do for fun, often the answer starts with the saddest statement ever: what I used to do is _______.

According to writer Anne Helen Peterson, many millennials have “trudged through burnout and are trying to figure out who they are outside of work.” This leads many towar...

HBO rebranded to HBO Max, and then to Max … and now back to HBO Max. Meanwhile Google is losing their longstanding “I’m Feeling Lucky” button and once again rainbow-izing their entire logo suite to make them even more indistinguishable from one another. Watching these ill-advised branding moves is enough to make anyone wonder why marketing teams need to spend so much time, money and creative energy unnecessarily reinventing things. There are, of course, examples of brilliant rebranding like what...

For over thirty years, the EPA’s Energy Star testing and certification program has helped consumers see how energy-efficient an appliance or electronic device is before buying. Recently the new EPA leadership has announced they will likely eliminate the program. It’s one of many such eliminations of government entities created to help protect consumers that are happening now in the US. As these agencies are defunded, the natural question to ask is what (if anything) will replace them?

The...

There is no way to buy a copy of the legendary Hobo Handbook. * Long rumored to be a “book” filled with advice from train hoppers on how to ride across America and Canada for free, the alternate title for the book is the “Crew Change Guide.” As the title suggests, the book is filled with information about how to take advantage of that crew change moment when train personnel are likely to be distracted and sneaking aboard is easier.

“New editions trickle out each year, photocopied in public li...

From all the “30 under 30” lists to the stories of tech billionaires who made their fortunes in their early 20s it can seem like the world has become obsessed with those who find their successes early. In the world of sports, that makes sense as our physical abilities always fade as we get older. But for many of us, success comes later in life. Sometimes much later. I often talk about finally becoming an entrepreneur at age 40 and how grateful I am that I was able to be an employee working for s...

If the dead could speak, what would they say? One family used AI to create an avatar version of a man who was killed in a tragic incidence of road rage, so that he could speak at the trial of the man who killed him. The family chose to use the avatar to offer forgiveness and honor the life of the man who was killed … but they could have had the avatar say anything else. The story sparked a lot of controversy because it raised some difficult questions about what we owe those who have died and whe...

Philips is beta testing a new platform that allows consumers to 3D print a replacement accessory for one of their electric shavers. Right now, it’s just one accessory and it’s only available in the Czech Republic – but the test is getting a lot of attention from product teams in a variety of sectors. The idea that companies could make accessories or offer small, hard-to-stock pieces directly for consumers to print at home or locally could be a game changer on many different levels.

The in...

For years, people have been worried about what will happen if humans start to worship AI and technology. The opposite question is one we rarely ask. What happens when AI worships us? In some cases, that dynamic is already leading to some concerning cases where people form deeper bonds with technology that adores them and start to shun the humans in their life who don’t offer the same sort of constant adoration. In a case profiled in a story from Rolling Stone this week, a woman shared that her h...

Kanye West agreed to do a sit-down interview with talk show host Piers Morgan. It didn’t go well. Initially I watched the full 17-minute video, so you don’t have to. I’m not usually in the habit of watching disasters unfold. This one might actually be worth watching. Let me tell you why …

There is something educational about watching an interview between two unlikeable people trying to conquer each other. There was hardly any listening between them and the interview ended after 4 short mi...

“Tools for thinking help make people smarter. But they don’t necessarily make them morally better. So what happens when you take brutal rulers and give them technology that makes them smarter and more efficient? They become better at doing evil.”

How will we evolve with the tools that we are given to make both ourselves and the tools better rather than worse? This is the question at the heart of this book from popular tech journalist Clive Thompson. The book has become a sort of modern classi...