written by Christopher Register You can now pre-order a friend—or, a Friend, which is designed to be an AI friend. The small, round device contains AI-powered software and a microphone, and it’s designed to be worn on a lanyard around the neck at virtually any time. The austere product website says of Friend that, “When… Read More »Friend AI: Personal Enhancement or Uninvited Company?
By Ben Davies
Academics, especially early in our careers, move around quite a lot. Having done my PhD in London, I have also lived or worked in Leeds, Liverpool, Oxford, and rural Pennsylvania; I am far from the most well-travelled academic I know. In many cases, when we arrive at a new job, we know that it is likely to only last a short period, perhaps less than a year.
This blog post isn’t about how hard it is to be an academic (though there are plenty of real problems that arise from the precarity in which many early career researchers find themselves). Instead, I want to consider something which all this moving around necessitates: casual friendship.
Written by Nadira Faber
This post was originally published on The Conversation
We routinely work together with other people. Often, we try to achieve shared goals in groups, whether as a team of firefighters or in a scientific collaboration. When working together, many people – naturally – would prefer doing so with others who are their friends. But, as much as we like spending time with our friends, is working with them in a group really good for our performance?
People have different personal opinions about this question. Some think working in a group of friends makes you more productive, because knowing and liking each other makes you more efficient. Others think it makes you less productive, because you spend too much time recapping your adventures from last weekend rather than focusing on work. So who is right?Read More »Cross Post: Friends With Unexpected Benefits – Working With Buddies Can Improve Performance
Royal Holloway
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I run a practical ethics course at Royal Holloway for second- and third-year undergraduates, and today our topic was friendship and social media. More specifically, we considered whether the increasing tendency for our friendships to be mediated and maintained through the use of websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr might be changing the nature of our friendships, and whether this is a good or a bad thing.Read More »Guest Post: Is social media bad for friendship?
