The author, HDan Siewiorek, provides a laundry list of things that future smartphones will make possible. Are you the parent of a newborn child and worried about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome? Well, just download the right suite of apps and worry no more. Afraid that little Tommy will get kidnapped on his way home from school? Well, the smartphone will use facial recognition apps to I.D. that creepy old man trying to coax him into a van and will whisper into Tommy’s ear that he should run to a safe house, 0.3 miles south.

Lest you think that these gadgets will only be useful to kids, plenty of apps will fix adults’ lives as well, enabling us to drive better, remember business partners’ names, never mess up a recipe, and automatically quantify all our vital signs. Maybe we’ll even get the chance to acquire apps like those that Siewiorek talks about; for many of his predictions, he tries to link them to similar technologies that already exist or are being developed.

It’s tempting to cheer on a future where we rely on apps to improve our lives. Not only can they address everyday annoyances like getting lost on the way to the store or forgetting your shopping list, but apps also might be a way of overcoming the cognitive biases we are prone to according to behavioral economics, as detailed in such books as Nudge: Improving Decisions About health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein and Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. It turns out that people aren’t as rational and autonomous as economic theory once predicted. For instance, we experience ego depletion: mental or physical tasks drain our willpower and increase the likelihood that we’ll make poor choices — say, breaking a workout routine or cheating on a test. We are also influenced by the way choices are framed: if deserts are the first thing you encounter in a cafeteria, for instance, then chances are higher that you’ll put one on your tray than if they were last. If vegetables and fruits are placed at eye level, you’re more likely to grab a serving.


Image: Nanny and Baby by Igor Grabar with Actroid-DER


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