NYC Social Robot

NYC Social Robot is a school project for the class Urban Experience in the Network Age in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (http://bit.ly/vjbT0b). The project is designed to facilitate social interaction in shared spaces in NYC.

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Background

While online social networks are empowering us ever more to stay connected digitally, our system for making connections in the real world lags far behind. When people are in a space together – on a street, in a park, at a coffee shop – they’re strangers. Little interaction takes place with people beyond those we know already, new connections are rare and generally result only from chance. While people blast constantly outward to social networks, often publicly, this speech is all but invisible to the people around them.

How can we change this? How can we help people find meaningful connections with those around them to help make shared spaces more social? The goal of NYC Social Robot is to experiment with these questions, staging interventions designed to connect people in the real world