The voice that navigated was definitely that of a machine, and yet you could tell that the machine was a woman, which hurt my mind a little. How can machines have genders? The machine also had an American accent. How can machines have nationalities? This can’t be a good idea, making machines talk like real people, can it? Giving machines humanoid identities? -Matthew Quick, Author of The Good Luck of Right Now

 

Texting or Calling: What’s Your Poison?

According to a 2011 Pew Research survey, 83% of American adults own cell phones and 75% of them send and receive text messages. In the study, individuals from the Black[*] and Hispanic ethno-racial groups sent/received the most amount of texts per day (remember this for later), and the educational level of the heaviest texters was less than high school (this is also important).

While the survey admits that these numbers are stagnate from the year before, if we flashforward to a 2015 International Smartphone Mobility Report by Informate, we know that US smartphone users spend 21 minutes a day on a call and spend 26 minutes a day texting. The smartphone users make only 6 calls per day, while they send/receive 32 texts; that’s more than 5 times as many texts as calls.

The verdict: It’s safe to say that more Americans prefer to text nowadays than they prefer to call. Trust me, I’m a Millennial.

Does Education have Anything to do with This? Continue Reading ATJ, Y’all

The (legal) public interest realm is new to me, but I am lucky to say that it has been an amazing environment to learn and thrive. The people who surround me are brilliant, judgment-free individuals who go out of their way to make me feel comfortable. They work every day to make sure there is inclusion, including members of the LGBTQIA+ communities.

I was tasked with finding an area of my project that can improve gender inclusiveness for low-income LGBTQIA+ individuals. In doing so, I started a discussion with the tech vendor of our chatbot, SavvySuit. I asked the team how we could change a part of our chatbot to accommodate the whole community. While there was not much that needed to change right now, Eli Mattern, co-founder of SavvySuit and a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, provided some great insight.
Continue Reading LGBTQIA+ Considerations