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Listening to someone crunchily eating Doritos is probably high on many lists of annoying behavior but imagine how much worse it must be to listen to the crunching in a headset while playing against a Dorito-eating opponent in a video game. In a beautiful example of knowing their audience, Doritos commissioned an AI company to quantify … Read more
Imagine a toilet that never needs to be flushed. Arid desert land converted into abundant living spaces. Plastic yellow gallon oil containers upcycled into chairs and houses. These are just a few of the dozens of ideas from across the world that are on display right now at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023 Show which will be open … Read more
“We are not trying to replace trees. We are trying to replace benches.” That’s the clever pitch of a project imagined and created by Serbian scientist Dr. Ivan Spasojevic who invented an urban photo-bioreactor called a “Liquid Tree” which uses a combination of water and microalgae to produce pure oxygen through the process of photosynthesis. As Dr. … Read more
I don’t often buy into the cringe-worthy hyperbole you often get from press releases, but the opening of The Sphere in Las Vegas might not be exaggerating (much). The Sphere is a huge dome structure covered by LED lights and large enough to fit the Statue of Liberty inside. The opening show is a new live set … Read more
Next week I’ll be back in Australia speaking at the international edition of SXSW in Sydney.
In addition to doing a Featured Session, I’ll be recording two episodes LIVE from the stage for my upcoming Non-Obvious Show podcast (launching later this year).
You might be tempted to lump the Ig Nobel Awards in with the Darwin Awards as simply a celebration of human stupidity – but it’s much more. Back in 1991 they were created to honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” The award ceremony has the memorably brilliant requirement that … Read more
Dennis Austin just died and I feel like he deserves a bit of a tribute. Maybe even a parade. He’s the co-inventor, along with Michael Gaskins, of the greatest software product ever imagined: PowerPoint. Yes, I said it. PowerPoint is the best software for communicators. I use it for everything. Giving talks. Designing images. Laying out … Read more
Radar speed scanners slow down drivers by showing them how fast they are going. The awareness creates the behavior change. Could the same idea shift how we eat? In Japan, 7-Eleven is testing a Vege-Check palm scanner that “uses reflection spectroscopy to measure carotenoid levels in a person’s skin.” These are the biomarkers that can estimate the amount of … Read more
Technology was supposed to make the entire world more accessible. It still can, but sometimes it seems that progress has stalled. This past month, the MIT Technology Review magazine devoted an entire issue to exploring the future of tech-enabled accessibility and how it may soon be more “normal” than you think. They spotlight everything from the sonification … Read more
Maybe you’ve already heard of Photoshop’s new “Generative Expand” feature that allows users to “expand images in any direction and generate an additional scene for the space with a combination of traditional app tools and AI.” Most of the examples of use cases for this feature involve filling in background details or fixing a photo that was … Read more
Non-Obvious Thinking is my latest book about the 4 secrets of becoming a non-obvious thinker - relesaed 10/01/2024.
Rohit Bhargava is a trend curator, founder of the Non-Obvious Company and the 3-time Wall Street Journal bestselling author of ten books.
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In addition to Non-Obvious Thinking, Rohit is the author of 10 books on trends, the future of business, building a more human brand with storytelling and how to create a more diverse and inclusive world.
