Was the driver late with your food You can use your phone to give him a one-star rating Did the shopkeeper treat you curtly You can write her a critical review While smartphones enable us to shop keep up with friends and more they have also given us the power to publicly rate each other And this can be a problem Rating each other this way is problematic because judgments can be made without context The driver gets rated poorly for a late delivery due to circumstances out of his control The shopkeeper gets a negative review when she rsquo [... more]

For many around the world life is getting lonelier The number of Americans who have no friends has quadrupled since Certain European countries have up to percent of their population feeling lonely while in Japan some elderly folks have resorted to crime so they can have the companionship of inmates in jail Entrepreneurs have come up with a ldquo solution rdquo to this loneliness epidemic mdash rent-a-friend Hired by the hour these people will meet you in a caf eacute to talk or accompany you to a party One such ldquo friend rdquo was asked who her clientele was ldquo [... more]