The Lay Technologist ™

It's easy for people to understand robots as a personification of artificial intelligence and the ultimate interface between humans and computers. After all, we can see them, we can touch them, and they look a lot like what we already know and understand. With that image of an advanced future, we can resolutely say that we are not there yet. We don't have robots living alongside humans, despite what our past selves imagined and predicted. But looks can be deceiving. The absence of physical robots doesn't mean they aren't there -- embedded in deep ways in the environments where we spend the most time and wedged sometimes between our human relationships.  Our world has been cloned, re-imagined, and modeled into an online environment. Software developers have operationalized interactions into likes, emotions into emojis, and fleeting thoughts in "tweets," and the like. While imperfect, this has created a virtual universe in which we all have an identity, in which...

Technology is still largely uncharted territory. This is in part because hardware platforms, networks, and sensors keep evolving and adding functionality. It is also because the field is embraced by a fresh and creative breed of engineers and creative people who keep tinkering with evolving technologies. As a result, we have "fortuitous" creations or inventions that are underappreciated, lesser known, and under valued. Therein lies a unique opportunity for the savvy user (or tech investor) to find hidden and underappreciated gems. Embracing this perspective, we can re-program our thinking to look beyond the current top performers and "must haves" for the underappreciated, undiscovered, and lesser-knowns. This phenomenon (if we can call it that) is also observable in mobile apps, which have made it easier for smaller pieces of software to enter the market, thereby reducing barriers for smart, creative, and savvy developers to disseminate and test out solutions. ...