Internet Psychologist
Graham Jones 
This weekend I will avoid going into the centre of my local town, Reading. That’s because it is “Reading Festival” weekend, when over 100,000 visitors descend upon the place. At an average of £300 a ticket, they must really love being with one another in a muddy field. People who …
The world is drying up. Yesterday we learned that the mighty Danube is so low that there is not enough water to cool nuclear power plants along its course. The day before, we were told that the drought in Central America is taking greater hold, causing problems in the Panama …
Somehow, I missed the eclipse the other evening. I was travelling and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time to catch a glimpse of the moon obscuring the sun. Indeed, I arrived at a motorway services at around the time the eclipse was due, to find hundreds …
The other day I was talking to a colleague about a student who I described as “so laid back they are almost horizontal”. This young man has been achieving good grades, but is so chilled it makes it seem as though he does no work, yet manages to get everything …
Today is “World Wide Web Day”, when we are encouraged to celebrate the creation of the WWW. Nobody quite knows why today was selected as a global day of celebration of the web. The date does not coincide with Tim Berners-Lee’s original proposal for the web. That was submitted on 12 March 1989. Nor is it the date on which …
On Monday, the UK got a new Prime Minister, and he set to work straight away trying to make everyone happy. Even before he set foot inside Number Ten, he promised to eradicate rough sleeping. The next day, he gave every household a £45 tax cut by dropping tax on …
I am not a football expert. So, let me get this straight. I understand that the team that wins is the one that scores more goals than the other side. Is that right? Your job as a highly-paid footballer, therefore, is just to keep on scoring goals. The more the …
Tomorrow afternoon, around 9 million people will sit down to watch two grown men grunt and sweat as they fight for tennis supremacy. The Wimbledon Men’s Singles Final attracts huge audiences every year. Indeed, last year the BBC broke records, with a further 69 million viewings of the Wimbledon Championship …
Today is “Alice in Wonderland Day”, and if you head over to Oxford, you will find all sorts of events and activities to celebrate the fantasy world created by Lewis Carroll. Now, before you go down a rabbit hole investigating all those things, let me explain why we should all …
Here in the UK, we’ve had record-breaking temperatures every day this week. Yesterday, the mercury got to 37.3 degrees. We all wish we had air conditioning. Indeed, in the space of a few days, air conditioning sales in the UK have rocketed. That’s not surprising, because air conditioning remains far …
Regular readers might think this weekend’s heatwave has gone to my head. Last week, I suggested that working from home had its problems and that returning to the office might be a good idea – assuming the office is a nice place to work. Now, I’m encouraging you to give …
All this week I have been working from home. That’s because it is the end of term at university and several rooms near my office are being used for exams. To avoid disrupting students, those of us with offices close to the exam rooms decided to work from home all …
Earlier this week, I was in a meeting where someone was adamant they could spot “anything” produced by artificial intelligence. They were highly confident in their ability to detect material written by AI. The evidence, though, suggests otherwise. Several studies have investigated whether people can detect AI-generated material, and overall, …
A few weeks ago, I was in a meeting when one of my colleagues said that they would “socialise” the decision after “circling back” with us. I didn’t say anything, but I sat there thinking, “I’m too old for this game, I no longer understand what people are saying to …
A Field Guide for Business Go ahead and Google “what is internet psychology.” What comes back is a curious jumble: a few academic papers behind paywalls, some university course pages, a handful of listicles about social media addiction, and not much that tells you what the field actually is or …