November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Improving Your Social Life One Gadget at a Time

(Page 2 of 2)

February 1, 2007
Mary O'Regan Utne.com 
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For those who aren't vain, but just plain lonely, a prototype of a new video technology from Accenture pairs up dinner companions. Users -- whom the company expects to be mostly the elderly and their friends and family -- communicate through a large, interactive screen that's hooked up to a broadband internet connection and placed in their dining room. Then, as Roger Highfield of Britain's Telegraph.co.uk explains, 'a computer program runs through a directory of pre-registered family members and friends to find someone who is 'available for dinner' -- or, at least, a conversation.' That makes one social technology out there that's using real human beings.

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