Author: The Conversation

South Africa has been grappling with power cuts for 15 years, which have worsened in recent years. The persistent power outages have disrupted every facet of life, including food safety. The Conversation Africa’s Ina Skosana spoke to food safety expert Lise Korsten about the impact of persistent power cuts on the food in our homes and the best ways to protect ourselves. How should we manage the food in our fridges? The reality is that load shedding for extended periods of time is causing temperature fluctuations in our fridges. Particularly if the fridge is regularly opened during load shedding or if it has old…

The independent game Vampire Survivors delivered a shock result at the 2023 Bafta Game Awards when it defeated blockbusters God of War: Ragnarok and Elden Ring to take home the best game prize. The result was met with surprise from many, including the development team themselves. While the developer, Poncle, may lack the budget of big studios, the effortless playability and clever design decisions tap into player psychology in ways that make it extremely satisfying to play. This psychological appeal is not accidental. Game designer Luca Galante has applied his previous experience in the gambling industry to Vampire Survivors. The resulting game distils the…

Mental Health Week, which runs from May 1 to 7, provides an opportunity to reflect on our collective well-being. In addition to rising mental health issues, there seems to be a general malaise across normally well individuals in society. This is manifesting as cognitive and physical exhaustion, limited patience, disinterest in work and a resentment of the stressors in our lives. Many of these stressors may be coming from interactions with technology: small but frequent frustrations that quickly dissipate, but when added up become micro-aggressive tech-triggers of digital distress, defined here as a form of psychological distress caused by a dysfunctional user experience with technology. Tech-triggers…

Drones have changed the way researchers study whales and dolphins. While we were once confined to the decks of boats and observation platforms, glimpsing the backs of surfacing animals, we can now watch them from above. Gaining a bird’s eye view of whales and dolphins has already taught us so much about their physiology and behaviour. However, there is a darker side to drone use in marine research. My doctoral research investigates the behaviour of beluga whales in the St. Lawrence Estuary. I have hundreds of hours under my belt as a drone pilot, flying over these amazing and endangered animals. As a…

It is a cliche that not knowing history makes one repeat it. As many people have also pointed out, the only thing we learn from history is that we rarely learn anything from history. People engage in land wars in Asia over and over. They repeat the same dating mistakes, again and again. But why does this happen? And will technology put an end to it? One issue is forgetfulness and “myopia”: we do not see how past events are relevant to current ones, overlooking the unfolding pattern. Napoleon ought to have noticed the similarities between his march on Moscow and the…

On November 30 2022, OpenAI launched the AI chatbot ChatGTP, making the latest generation of AI technologies widely available. In the few months since then, we have seen Italy ban ChatGTP over privacy concerns, leading technology luminaries calling for a pause on AI systems development, and even prominent researchers saying we should be prepared to launch airstrikes on data centres associated with rogue AI. The rapid deployment of AI and its potential impacts on human society and economies is now clearly in the spotlight. What will AI mean for productivity and economic growth? Will it usher in an age of automated luxury for all, or…

To build a machine, one must know what its parts are and how they fit together. To understand the machine, one needs to know what each part does and how it contributes to its function. In other words, one should be able to explain the “mechanics” of how it works. According to a philosophical approach called mechanism, humans are arguably a type of machine – and our ability to think, speak and understand the world is the result of a mechanical process we don’t understand. To understand ourselves better, we can try to build machines that mimic our abilities. In doing so,…

The social separation imposed by the pandemic led us to rely on technology to an extent we might never have imagined – from Teams and Zoom to online banking and vaccine status apps. Now, society faces an increasing number of decisions about our relationship with technology. For example, do we want our workforce needs fulfilled by automation, migrant workers, or an increased birth rate? In the coming years, we will also need to balance technological innovation with people’s wellbeing – both in terms of the work they do and the social support they receive. And there is the question of…

We carry them everywhere, take them to bed, to the bathroom and for many people they’re the first thing they see in the morning – more than 90% of the world owns or uses a mobile phone and many of us couldn’t manage without one. But while health concerns about phones use usually focus on the distraction they can cause while driving, the possible effects of radiofrequency exposure, or just how addictive they can be. The microbial infection risk of your phone is much less appreciated – but it’s very real. A 2019 survey found that most people in the UK use their phones on the toilet. So…

The big idea Social media can be mentally draining. And when mentally drained, you are more likely to be influenced by a high number of likes on posts – even to the point of clicking on ads for products you don’t need or want – according to our recent experiments on how social media affects behavior. As a professor of advertising, I have studied social media behavior for years. In late 2022, my colleague Eric Haley and I conducted three online studies on Americans aged 18-65 to test how people under various mental loads respond to ads differently. The control group in each study…