This article was taken from The WIRED World in 2016 -- our fourth annual trends report, a standalone magazine in which our network of expert writers and influencers predicts whats coming next. Be the first to read WIREDs articles in print before theyre posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
During a recent family dinner to celebrate the engagement of my cousin Anthony, the happy couple ceremoniously picked up their phones and deleted Tinder, the dating app on which they met.
"Weve gone from hook-up to chuppah in less than six months," Anthony declared in his toast. Intrigued, I asked them how many messages they exchanged before they met face-to-face. It turned out they had sent more than 150 texts to each other, over the course of three days.
"I started to share genuine things about myself that I would normally keep hidden for some time," his fiancée told me. "I felt like I didnt just know him, but actually trusted him."
Anthony and Emily essentially met the person they plan to spend the rest of their lives with by swiping right. Their engagement represents not just a digital-age acceleration of intimacy but a world in which the speed and nature of trustis being fundamentally redefined.
Tinder and other dating apps are a green shoot in our understanding of how trust formed between people online can transfer into the real world. On the flip side, we are in the early stages of seeing how real-world interactions could change trust online. Take Alan, a 42-year-old Airbnb guest I recently met, who was highly sceptical of renting a home from a stranger. The place turned out to be much better than he expected.
"The experience changed my assumptions," says Alan. "I was clearly wrong."
That one good travel experience could effectively be the gateway to persuasion, positively influencing Alans trust in the online world and changing his behaviour around everything from believing strangers reviews on products and services to trusting cryptocurrencies that have no traditional entity to trust.
A new trust framework is emerging, fuelled by social, economic and technological forces that will profoundly change not just how we are trusted in the world, but how we view trust in the world.
Understanding of, and research into, the interaction between technology and trust is still in its nascent stages.Stanford University sociologists Paolo Parigi and Karen Cook are studying communities that include couch-surfing and dating sites.
"We have some preliminary research confirming the idea that peoples levels of trust towards others can be modified through the experience of participating in this relatively new form of collective action," says Parigi. "If confirmed in subsequent research, the implication is that trust can be engineered and that technology can play a crucial role."
As I researched platforms that depend on person-to-person trust, I saw that there is a common pattern. In the first layer, people have to trust that a new idea will work and is safe. The next layer is trusting the platform or third party facilitating the exchange. And the third layer is trusting the other user. I call this process the trust stack.
Take the French long-distance ride-sharing startupBlaBlaCar, now connecting more than two million drivers and passengers every month. At the outset, you have to dismiss the warning most parents give their kids: never get in a car with a stranger. You trust that ride-sharing is a safe idea. Then you trust the platform will not only weed out the bad apples but will help you fix any problems. Finally, you trust the driver and passengers that you will share a ride with will be good, honest people.
Over time, people open up to changing their behaviour the more they live in these trust structures. So sharing a ride with someone you dont know can become as normal as driving alone.
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As people go through the trust stack in different areas of their lives, the process and comfort of using online/offline trust to make decisions accelerates. A BlaBlaCar user is likely to be more open to finding a lawyer on a marketplace such as UpCounsel than going with a bricks-and-mortar firm. Digital tools are raising our levels of trust in others in ways that are speeding up the disruption of an old norm and accelerating the adoption of new ideas.
This is a threat to big organisational systems -- universities, corporations, banks, healthcare, even licensed taxi associations -- that have depended on people placing value in the belief that traditional safeguards and centralised guarantees will keep them safe and render goods and services reliable.
As this traditional institutional trust framework continues to crumble, it creates fertile ground for technology-engineered decentralised trust directly between people.
Tesla the All-Electric car manufacturing firm has just unveil an environmentally friendly SUV model and much more, its Vegan.
The Tesla Model X, with its double-hinged falcon wing doors, looks like something from the future — and it just might be. The worlds first all-electric four-by-four SUV can hit 60mph in 3.2 seconds, a top speed of 155 mph and drive 250 miles per change. And now you can get the seven-seater with faux-leather seats.
When you think of luxury cars, you often think leather seats and that "new car smell" but what if you have plenty of money to spend, but dont want it lined with animal skin? Its a problem that plagues vegans.
For decades, leather-free options in the car industry have been limited at best. Generally speaking, buyers looking to avoid the use of animal products in their cars would have to settle for basic models with cloth seats and plastic steering wheels, but as they add options like better engines, heated seats or upgraded speakers, theyre often forced to choose leather seats.
PETA, a shareholder of Tesla Motors, has succeeded in urging the electric car company to launch a fully vegan interior option for the Model X electric SUV. Vegan customers now have a high-end interior option for the Model X. (Photo : Tesla Motors)
But now, Teslas "Ultra White" interior option, currently only offered in the new Model X SUV, comes available with a fully vegan interior — including synthetic leather seats, steering wheel and gear shift — giving that streamlined luxury look of leather.
The company reportedly created the new interior option, in part, after receiving criticism from potential customers who felt the companys eco-friendly stance on limiting emissions made no sense when the cars included animal products.
Livestock around the world account for about 14.5 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Critics argued that Teslas continued use of leather would be perpetuating the need for more livestock, which would release more gas.
Many people might not know that animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, is a shareholder of Tesla Motors. At the companys annual meeting in June last year, PETA urged Tesla to offer vegan leather for the interiors of its vehicles, with CEO Elon Musk stating that he would "absolutely" consider it.
"By offering a 100 percent leather-free car, Tesla is pushing its eco-friendly business even further into the future," PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said in a statement. "PETA can now point to Tesla as a source for top-quality vehicles whose cruelty-free seats are as kind to the environment as its engines are."
Tesla is taking reservations for the Model X with a $5,000 deposit. The estimated base price is $80,000. Delivery is set to begin at the end of 2016
The giant Tech company Microsoft has disclosed the launch of a new update for Android device users, the company says the new version of the app for Android will have added new two features that will enhance productivity for Android users.
The new updates makes calling easier than ever as users can schedule calls in a Jiffy. Also, users can now easily open the Office documents – Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets – from the chat window.
“We know that many of you arrange calls over Skype, and we’ve now made it easier for you to add it to your calendar, so you don’t forget about them,” Microsoft stated in a blogpost. It added, “If a friend sends you a Word document, tapping on the file will open it right up in Word for Android; no extra steps needed! If you don’t have Office apps for Android installed, tapping on the file will give you easy instructions on how to download and install them.”
The Updated version of the app is now officially available on Google Play Store for Download.
Let’s be honest: November isn’t the best time to visit Helsinki. But the gloom that envelops the Finnish capital every autumn didn’t stop some 15,000 visitors from descending on Slush, one of the world’s largest tech gatherings, which drew 1,700 startups this year as well as Google, Nokia and GE.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Although there are only 5.4 million Finns, they’ve had an outsized influence on the technology of our modern lives. Finland, after all, is the home of the open-source operating system Linux as well as Nokia, which set off the explosive growth of mobile communications.
“We have a tradition of working together,” says Peter Vesterbacka, co-founder of Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds, who helped start Slush in 2008. “Maybe it has something to do with our cold winter. If you don’t get your house built, you’ll die.”
GE is tapping into this spirit. Last year, the company’s healthcare business opened the Health Innovation Village, a startup incubator that is helping 26 local companies develop products tied to healthcare and medicine. The Village just partnered with the U.S.-based StartUp Health, the world’s largest digital health hub, which opened its first international location in Helsinki in November.
But GE is also using local brainpower to change the face of medicine by moving healthcare into the cloud. Its engineers in Helsinki are specifically looking at patient monitoring. They are building wireless tools that could one day be no larger than a Band-Aid and constantly stream heartbeat, blood pressure, respiration and other information into the cloud, where software could analyze it, alert doctors to anomalies and looming crises, and effectively create our digital twins.
“The same transformation that happened with mobile phones is taking place in patient monitoring,” says Erno Muuranto, the engineer leading the effort. “The world is going wireless and wearable. We could run hospitals like smart factories. Wireless sensors and data analytics will help correctly diagnose patients in the ambulance. It will allow us to administer correct treatment faster, which could lead to faster discharge. It will also allow us to monitor people remotely from home. All of this will help improve care and costs.”
Like many members of his team of 60 scientists and engineers, Muuranto came to GE after cutting his teeth at Nokia. The researchers, who specialize in everything from miniaturization and wireless protocols to user experience design, are developing the first generation of wireless sensors that can monitor heartbeat, blood pressure and several other parameters.
On a recent visit his lab, Muuranto attached one such device to a colleague and then monitored her heartbeat and blood oxygen level with an iPhone app the team built using Predix, a software platform GE developed specifically for the Industrial Internet. “It’s still early, but remember how quickly we moved from the mobile phones that looked like a brick to devices that slipped in our pockets,” he says.
Within five years, the technology could enable patient monitoring over a wireless network that will allow doctors to learn what’s happening with a patient from any connected device. Image credit: GE Healthcare
The first opportunity for the tech is to remove the spaghetti strands of wires attached to patients in intensive care units and to use algorithms and analytics to eliminate false alarms. “Some 90 percent of alarms are not actionable,” Muuranto says. “We are looking for ways to use signals from multiple sensors to generate meaningful alarms.”
Within five years, the technology could enable patient monitoring over a wireless network that will allow doctors to learn what’s happening with a patient from any connected device.
“The world is going wireless and wearable,” says GE’s Erno Muuranto. “We could run hospitals like smart factories. Wireless sensors and data analytics will help correctly diagnose patients in the ambulance.” Image credit: GE Reports
The sensors would draw power from a tiny integrated battery and use radio waves to communicate with a receiver either in the patient’s pocket or in his hospital room. Outside the hospital, the information aggregated locally from the sensors could be relayed into a cellular network and automatically provide doctors and hospitals with round-the-clock patient monitoring and an uninterrupted flow of data.
GE Healthcare’s head office in Helsinki has the feel of a startup. It includes Warrior Coffee, an artisanal espresso joint complete with tattooed baristas piping Nirvana and Joy Division into the sitting area. Image credit: GE Reports
GE and other companies are already building so-called medical body area networks (MBANs) and have applied to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for access to the radio spectrum, where wireless medical devices could operate.
“This is the digital health we’ve been talking about,” says Mikko Kauppinen, finance director at GE Healthcare Finland and cofounder of the Health Innovation Village. “This is different from gadgets. We already know how to build super-robust monitoring devices you see today in hospitals that meet FDA standards. This is a platform. Mobile phones got smaller and our devices will also shrink. We are building an ecosystem for Industrial Internet for the body.” Says Kauppinen: “It will transform patient monitoring. Before long, you could see these devices everywhere.”
The future of wireless healthcare is dawning in Helsinki. Image credit: GE Reports
Sony Xperia Z5 Compact vs iPhone 6s: design and build quality
While the specs of the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact are fairly similar to its brother, the Xperia Z5, with this device youre dealing with a smaller body. Despite the difference in size, there arent many visual variations between Sonys pair of smartphones.
The Sony Xperia Z5 Compact seems like a step down in terms of build quality, however, and the square-looking shape of the handset may not please everybody in a world where most desirable mobiles are curvy. The Sony Xperia Z5 Compact fits snugly in the hand, although its a slight nuisance feeling the straight corners of the phone dig into your palm.
Place an iPhone 6 alongside an iPhone 6s and its impossible to tell the two apart. However, its a different story when you pick the gadgets up, as the iPhone 6s is very slightly heavier. Its a bulkier smartphone that shares the same design language as its predecessor, which could either be taken as a pro or a con. Were not too sure about the antenna lines on the back of the iPhone 6s, which in our minds ruin the sleek look of an otherwise gorgeous gadget. Well have to get over it.
The Sony Xperia Z5 Compact arrives with a 4.6-inch 720p display, rocking a pixel density of 323 ppi. The fact that youre browsing content on a smaller display means the picture ends up looking particularly crisp.
Sonys Xperia Z5 Compact screen is also built with the companys Dynamic Contrast Enhancer tech, which makes the bright parts of the screen brighter and the dark parts a truer, deeper black. The smartphone offers some impressive viewing angles even in bright sunlight, too.
Apples 4.7-inch Retina HD iPhone 6s display is a beauty, and while, specs-wise, it tells basically the same story as the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6s comes equipped with a pressure-sensing 3D Touch display. This headline-grabbing addition means that the iPhone can tell the difference between a tap, a press and a long press.
As time goes on, more and more of the most popular apps in the App Store are updating to take full advantage of the feature. Interestingly, the iPhone 6 has a higher screen brightness than the iPhone 6s, which affects outdoor use very slightly.
Sony Xperia Z5 Compact vs iPhone 6s: processor and storage
Sonys Xperia Z5 Compact arrives with a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor tucked inside, providing 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage. In comparison, the Xperia Z5 holds 3GB of RAM. Its possible to expand the storage of the Z5 Compact to 128 GB with a microSD card.
Apple uses its own processor which makes comparing it with the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact a difficult job, but we can say that the iPhone 6s is very nippy, and that it copes extremely well with intense gaming sessions and multitasking.
Theres no room for expandable storage, but the smartphone arrives in 16 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB variants. Nowadays, not too many buyers are going to be satisfied with 16 GB of storage, so Sony gets a thumbs up for offering double that with the Xperia Z5 Compact.
Sony Xperia Z5 Compact vs iPhone 6s: camera
Both the cameras found in the Xperia Z5 Compact and iPhone 6s are impressive, but well start with Sonys. The Xperia Z5 Compact features one of Sonys best smartphone cameras ever, with plenty of modes and manual settings for photography fanatics to play around with.
The shooter on the back of the mobile can capture 4K video, also featuring a 23 megapixel Exmor RS Sensor and super-fast autofocus of 0.03 seconds. Dynamic range is glorious, and image detail is very strong. The 5.1 MP front-facing snapper is also solid, featuring the same Exmor sensor as the back.
On the other side of the fence, Apples iPhone 6s features a 12 MP camera on the back and a 5 MP front-facing camera. Although the megapixel count is lower, the smartphone still take gorgeous pictures and videos. While the camera app found on the iPhone 6s is similar to those before it, this build adds Live Photos to its box of tricks, which takes a 1.5-second picture before and after you hit the capture button.
The result is a unique video memory that gives your favourite pictures some colourful context. Its hard to tell between the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s when it comes to image quality; despite the increase in megapixels, results are still similar.
The Sony Xperia Z5 Compact arrived on the scene with Android 5.1 Lollipop, but recent rumours suggest that the smartphone will be receiving the Marshmallow upgrade in the very near future.
Despite whispers of an update, Android 5.1 Lollipop performs well on Sonys smartphone, although the group has put its own mark on the UI by adding apps such as Xperia Lounge, Twitter, PS4 Remote Play, the Sony Entertainment Network and more.
Apples iPhone 6s drops with iOS 9, which brings some major enhancements such as an improved, smarter Siri, added iCloud functionality, a revamped app switcher and more. While the update cant be considered a complete overhaul, it certainly adds enough to make iOS faster and easier to use.
This is the best build of iOS ever and perhaps the biggest reason why the iPhone 6s has been received as well as it has.
OnePlus X vs Xperia Z5 Compact comparison: small change
We wrote about the Sony Xperia Z5 Compacts impressive 2,700 mAh battery in our full review, in which we confirmed that the smartphone definitely has enough power to keep it charged up all day, even during heavy use.
Quick Charge is a nice bonus, which prepares the Xperia Z5 Compact for a good couple of hours of use in less than 15 minutes. Its a godsend for smartphone users that need a quick burst of juice before hitting the road.
Meanwhile, the iPhone 6s is home to a 1,715 mAh battery – even smaller than the 1,800 mAh offering inside the iPhone 6. Improved battery monitoring goes some way to keeping you up and running, but youll probably still end up charging the smartphone every evening.
For a full comparison between the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact and Apple iPhone 6s, check out the table below:
Sony Xperia Z5 Compact
Apple iPhone 6s
SCREEN
4.6 in
4.7 in
RESOLUTION
720 x 1,280 pixels
750 x 1,334 pixels
RAM MEMORY
2 GB
2 GB
PROCESSOR
Snapdragon 810
Apple A9
STORAGE
32 GB
16 GB / 64 GB / 128 GB
MAIN CAMERA
23 MP
12 MP
FRONTAL CAMERA
5.1 MP
5 MP
BATTERY
2,700 mAh
1,715 mAh
Sony Xperia Z5 Compact vs iPhone 6s: verdict
Theres some drastic design differences between the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact and iPhone 6s, but both smartphones share some common strengths.
Sonys Xperia Z5 Compact manages to handle plenty of tough tasks despite its smaller size, while using iOS 9 on the iPhone 6s is as smooth as youd like.
There are too many slight annoyances associated with the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact for it to be crowned an iPhone-beater. The build quality is somewhat lacking, the UI isnt as polished and its not as sleek-looking as the iPhone. Even so, the Android-powered gadget brings great battery life to the table, along with a camera that takes some truly top-notch pictures. Its a very good phone, theres no denying that.
If youre looking for flagship-esque performance inside a smaller smartphone, youll love the Xperia Z5 Compact. Ultimately, these are both cracking phones, with both the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact and Apple iPhone 6 providing enough functionality to keep you happy for a long time.
Which smartphone do you think is the better all-round performer? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
There are a few problems with older smartphone OS versions. One is security: more ways to exploit software are discovered all the time, and once Google ceases to support an operating system, youre on your own.
Another problem is that smartphones running older software tend not to perform as well as those with newer software. There are exceptions, crippling bugs, etc, but at this point, Android Lollipop is running fairly steadily.
Lastly, Android Lollipop and Marshmallow have a handful of unique and interesting features, which you just don’t have access to with a phone that is stuck on KitKat. Features like Google Now on Tap, and the recent apps menu, to name just a couple.
So my question to you is this: if your phone is stuck on KitKat, and won’t be updated, do you think that now is the time to abandon it?
136.When one or more individuals in the group withhold effort, express negative feelings and attitudes, and violate important team norms and behaviors, the effect is called the:
a.
bad apples effect
b.
sucker effect
c.
slowdown effect
d.
free rider effect
ANS:A
137.When team members hesitate to help or provide constructive feedback, what team dysfunction might be occurring?
a.
avoidance of accountability for results
b.
free riding
c.
absence of trust
d.
bad apples
ANS:C
138.When team members do not commit to a clear set of goals and plan of action, what team dysfunction might be occurring?
