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Click reports on Karen, the fictional coach in a software-driven experiential art piece. Part story, part game, it’s designed by the group Blast Theory to be played over a period of days. The app offers a deliberately unsettling experience that’s intended to make us question the way we bare ourselves to our digital devices. Click talks to Ju Row Farr from Blast Theory and Dr Kelly Page a research scientist and specialist in the psychology of web tech who has helped to design Karen.

Robots on reins
In the future robots will help firefighters navigate smoke-filled rooms and limit the danger posed to them during rescue missions. Click looks into the future with Professor Jacques Penders from the University of Sheffield who is researching in this new area. The technology offers a two-way connection; the firefighters can use the robots through haptics (touch sensors) and the robots respond sensitively to the goals and actions of the firefighters.

How does programming language shape companies?
Click investigates the degrees of sophistication in the programming language used by companies such as Google and Facebook and their varying philosophies in allowing us to search for that which we desire. Click hears from the programmer James Somers about the levels of sophistication adopted by these global companies as explored in his recent feature ‘Toolkits of the Mind’.

(Main Image: Karen the App - a digital fictional life-coach. Image by RULER.)