When someone falls down and begins grabbing at their chest. How many people would stop and try to help them? Psychology experiments show that most will walk by, hoping the next person will stop and help the struggling person. Witness apathy in the face of need is wired into our brains and difficult to overcome.
An interactive billboard campaign in the Netherlands hopes to break the cycle of apathy by putting people into the fake event using augmented reality and then giving them tips on what to do. The billboards are in Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
I wonder if future image context recognition apps will be able to shake people out of their mob think and let them know to take an action? Or maybe they’ll just turn their AR glasses to standby instead.
