Ira Hyman

Title Authored on Link to edit Content
‘Pokémon Go’ Adds to Safety Concerns Associated with Smartphone Use, says WWU Professor 2016-07-27
How distracted are people when they are walking and texting?

How do cellphones decrease personal safety? WWU's Ira Hyman talk about "distracted walking" and Pokemon Go.

2016-07-20
Oh No, Pokémon Go!

We have an infestation of Pokémon on my campus and in my community. Have you seen any Pokémon lurking around your home, at work, in parks, or on the streets near you? I’ve even found one in my office (see the picture).

2016-07-18
Should using your mobile phone while walking be outlawed?

As beneficial as they are to our lives, mobile phones also present a legitimate threat to public safety – and not because of on-road use or radiation.

Many mobile phone users now text, or intently perform some other function on their phone, while walking. This is commonly seen in public…

2016-04-12
Texting while walking isn't funny anymore

Manny Fiori’s job is to make sure your phone doesn’t kill you. He guards the entrance to a garage near my San Francisco office and stops cars from hitting pedestrians so engrossed in screens they don’t notice they’re stepping into traffic. “People are so preoccupied…

2016-02-19
It's Official: Our Purses Have Become Totally Useless

"People fail to become aware of things around them that they would otherwise notice," Ira Hyman told Mic. Hyman, a professor of psychology at Western Washington University, researches our relationships with technology, including inattentional blindness in college students who use their…

2015-11-04
How Do You Solve a Problem Like an Earworm?

If you are one of the 92 percent of the population who regularly experience earworms—snippets of music that pop uninvited into your head and won't go away—you might wish there was a way to make them stop. Earworms are a generally benign form of rumination, the repetitive, intrusive thoughts…

2015-10-15
Opinion: Distracted walking beomes punishable offence

Such is the state of public consciousness these days that civic authorities are now being forced to tell us how to cross the street like children, or else be punished.

B.C. Justice Minister Suzanne Anton in October drastically increased penalty points for distracted driving. The penalty…

2015-09-09
Big Picture Science Radio Show: Forget to Remember

You must not remember this. Indeed, it may be key to having a healthy brain. Our gray matter evolved to forget things; otherwise we’d have the images of every face we saw on the subway rattling around our head all day long. Yet we’re building computers with the capacity to remember everything.…

2015-07-14
Taiwan just banned kids from overusing tech. About time, or asinine?

Taiwan is leading the world towards a happier, safer, more social, and healthier future. Not by creating some amazing new piece of mobile technology, but by restricting its use — by law — for those of an impressionable and vulnerable age.
At least, that’s what we assume it wants to achieve…

2015-02-09
Subscribe to Ira Hyman