The Anthropology & Future Of Chat-Bots & Conversational-Commerce: An Interview With Toby Shapshak

In July of 2013 Toby Shapshak, the South African speaker, strategist and editor of Stuff Magazine, did a TED talk called You Don't Need An App For That. Business leaders, innovators and experience designers would soon realize how profound this TED talk was to the rest of the world. Shapshak's astute observations and message to the rest of the world was years ahead of a revolution that Forbes would call "the new way we'll be interacting with computers." Toby's 2013 Ted talk touted that "while the rest of the world is updating statuses and playing games on smartphones, Africa is developing useful SMS-based solutions to everyday needs". Since 2013 his TED talk has been viewed 1,438,046 times as of July 19, 2016. Fast forward a couple of years and we see more apps than anyone knows what to do with, as well as a notable decrease in usage and app-downloads. This has businesses confused and frustrated.