PSYBERTRONIC Blog

mwc 2018

Insights from the Mobile World Congress 2018

A few weeks ago I attended the Mobile World Congress – one of the biggest tech conferences in the world.  I was interested to see what’s hot in tech now and I wanted to get some insights on the direction that technology is heading and how that technology may interact with and affect its human users.  Below I’ll talk about some of my observations and then mention a couple of the things which I simply...

humans and tech

Why AI? – Part 2

This is the follow up blog post about my conversation with a group of AI enthusiasts to whom I presented the question: “Why are you, and why do you think other people are, so interested in AI?”  The post about the first 3 responses is here, and this post will discuss the last 2: #4. Because the optimization of any project (and therefore growth and development in general) relies on having the best possible tools...

AI future

Why AI? – Part 1

With the emergence of any powerful, influential technology, it’s important to ask ourselves and its creators why it exists, what purpose it serves and what consequences it may lead to in the future.  AI is undoubtedly the most important technology being developed in modern times, able to dramatically change our professional and social landscape in various ways, therefore we should ask not only “how does it work?” and “how do we improve it?”, which appear...

cyborg thoughts

Thoughts on Transhumanism: Both the Newest Movement and the Oldest

  Transhumanism is a modern movement based on the belief that humans can and should develop beyond their current intellectual and physical limitations, such as aging or sub-optimal intelligence, via advances in science and technology.  One of the most well-known and intriguing objectives of the movement is to “solve death” by merging people with technology, either via uploading minds to computers or by rejuvenating humans biomolecularly so that they don’t age.  Transhumanists include Max More,...

AI brain

Thoughts on AI from a Psychological Perspective: Defining Intelligence

First of all, although it may be obvious to some, it’s important to note that Artificial Intelligence (deep learning especially) is a mechanized, simplified version of human neural networks and cognitive processing.  Therefore psychology and Artificial Intelligence are deeply connected and influential on each other, and should logically be thought about and studied together much in the same way we use models to expand our understanding of other complex subjects in science and art like...

deceitful wolf

Design, Trust & Manipulation – How Businesses Abuse the Power of UX

If you’re anything like me, good website design immediately instills a sense of trust in you and bad design raises red flags. If I go to a website and see big blocks of small text in weird fonts, ad clutter and an overall unappealing layout, I immediately get a feeling that something isn’t right, even before I take a look at the content.  Something about bad design causes an immediate visceral recoil and can make...

video games world of warcraft tavern

Social Life in MMO Video Games – a Gamer and a Psychologist Discuss

“Facebook is just a simplified version of video games.”   For all those readers out there who are not very familiar with Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) video games like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy, I’m here to tell you that they’re just like our world, if our world was full of castle-laden mountain peaks, monsters lurking around every corner, glowing portals that hover in the air like fly traps, and enormous swords that characters...

Neuromarketing marketing on a tablet

Neuromarketing – Marketing Tactics Based on Psychology Research

Have you ever visited a website and seen a “Sign Up” or “Download” button at the bottom of the page that looked so well-designed and appealing that you just HAD to push it?  Now compare that to the small, uninteresting buttons on websites just a few years ago with their suspicious Times New Roman fonts and their caveman-esque WordArt shading.  The reason why advertising and marketing has become so much more stylish and effective these...

social media icons on a smartphone screen

What your Smartphone Use Might be Saying About You

Smartphone Behaviors and the Psychological Problem they are Most Associated With   Sometimes the literature on the subject of social media, the Internet and smartphones tends to address each of these things as a single problematic entity.  You’ve probably heard warnings about “smartphone addiction” or “social media obsession” more than once from the news media, from your grandmother, etc.  However, the Internet and the smartphone are just channels through which we access a world of...

cyborg robot girl with computers and data

You are a Cyborg

I am willing to bet that 95% of you reading this have your smartphone within arm’s reach or in your hand at this very moment.  Only 10 years ago, hardly anyone owned a smartphone, and today, 2.3 billion people have one or more of these multi-functional handheld devices.  And we don’t only own them; we are so connected to our smartphones in so many ways that some might say we have functionally merged with them,...