Social Business

The automotive future isn’t self-driving… Not yet

Neville Hobson 10 Comments Artificial Intelligence, Business, Communication, IBM, Innovation, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Business, Society, Software, Technology, Trends, Web
Johnny Cab / 'Total Recall' 1990

When the topic of artificial intelligence and cars gets discussed – it’s a topic of frequent discussion online these days – it’s often in the single context of self-driving cars. While Google is a lead in many discussions about self-driving experimentation (where a car is largely driven and controlled by a wide range of technologies), electric sports car maker Tesla gets a lot of press due to its stylish sports cars that capture imaginations with their high speeds, market-leading battery innovation, automated driving capability, and competitive prices. Tesla’s also in the spotlight for owners of its cars getting killed in crashes where fingers point to the Autopilot technology in its cars being less than perfect for use on public roads […]

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Re-imagine IBM

Neville Hobson 7 Comments Business, Communication, Experiences, IBM, Personal Development, Professional Development, Social Business, Technology, Workplace

Last December, when I started telling friends that I would be joining IBM as a  full-time employee, I received some mixed responses. Of course, all were well-wishing but some came with quizzical looks and the question “IBM? I couldn’t imagine you at IBM!” It turns out that the question was based on a view about me as a communicator, and about IBM and what the company does that was out of date. That view was based on what IBM largely was in the late 20th century and turn of the 21st whose business embraced hardware (think of mainframe computers, bringing personal computing into the modern era with the invention of the IBM PC, and the venerable IBM ThinkPad laptop), software […]

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In data, small is the new big

Neville Hobson 24 Comments Business, Communication, Events, Small Data Forum, Social Business, Software, Technology, Trends, Workplace

Everyone’s talking about big data. Often, it’s Big Data where an initial capital in each word lends the phrase an air of great significance that focuses on size. From gigabytes to exabytes to zetabytes, you’re in no doubt that this is big with an impact on society of equal effect. Yet for most people I know, big data in alliance with size-words does little to help you understand what it means or, indeed, the relevance of it to your business. It’s easy to get lost in the hugeness of it all. This perspective on big data formed a large part of a discussion I took part in last week at The Hospital Club in Covent Garden, London, in the inaugural […]

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Digital agencies must learn how to speak the CEO’s language

Neville Hobson 19 Comments Business, Communication, Leadership, Marketing, Social Business, Technology, Trends
compass

Digital technology has become key to how brands survive and thrive, which means agencies will have to take on the C-suite directly

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The rise of the cognitive PR machines

Neville Hobson 43 Comments Business, Communication, IBM, Innovation, Online Media, Public Relations, Social Business, Social Media, Society, Software, Technology, Trends, Web

Within two years, 20 percent of business content will be authored by machines or “robo writers,” as Gartner puts it in its list of ten predictions of an algorithmic and smart machine-driven world that the analyst firm published last October. It was a topic I used as a focal point in my presentation about PR measurement and how it’s getting smarter partly through automation that captured close attention from the 50+ PR pros in the audience at a CIPR event in London last week. Content that is based on data and analytical information will be turned into natural language writing by technologies that can proactively assemble and deliver information through automated composition engines. Content currently written by people – such […]

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