INNOVATIONS THAT WILL CHANGE
YOUR TOMORROW…13,14 and 15
13. The Anti-Slouch Screen
If you slump down when you’re
typing on an ErgoSensor monitor by Philips, it’ll suggest that you sit up
straighter. To help office workers avoid achy backs and tired eyes, the
device’s built-in camera follows the position of your pupils to determine how
you are sitting. Are you too close? Is your neck tilted too much? Algorithms
crunch the raw data from the sensor and tell you how to adjust your body to
achieve ergonomic correctness. The monitor can also inform you that it’s time
to stand up and take a break, and it will automatically power down when it
senses that you’ve left. Jason
Fagone
14. The Shutup Gun
When you aim the SpeechJammer at
someone, it records that person’s voice and plays it back to him with a delay
of a few hundred milliseconds. This seems to gum up the brain’s cognitive
processes — a phenomenon known as delayed auditory feedback — and can
painlessly render the person unable to speak. Kazutaka Kurihara, one of the
SpeechJammer’s creators, sees it as a tool to prevent loudmouths from
overtaking meetings and public forums, and he’d like to miniaturize his
invention so that it can be built into cellphones. “It’s different from
conventional weapons such as samurai swords,” Kurihara says. “We hope it will
build a more peaceful world.”
Catherine Rampell
15. The Kindness Hack
Researchers at Wharton, Yale and
Harvard have figured out how to make employees feel less pressed for time:
force them to help others. According to a recent study, giving workers menial
tasks or, surprisingly, longer breaks actually leads them to believe that they
have less time, while having them write to a sick child, for instance, makes
them feel more in control and “willing to commit to future engagements despite
their busy schedules.” The idea is that completing an altruistic task increases
your sense of productivity, which in turn boosts your confidence about
finishing everything else you need to do.
Catherine Rampell
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