Bjork could be a great psychologist. Read her lyrics to the song ‘Human Behaviour.’ The lyrics make a simple point: we cannot rely on rational, logical ideas to anticipate human behaviour and engage people with brands. The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer makes this point: In economics, Nobel Prizes are regularly awarded for work that assumes that people make decisions, as if they had perfect information, and could compute the optimal solution for the problem at hand. But, how do real people make good decisions under the usual conditions of little time and scarce information?

A lot happened in 2011. Uprisings across the Arab world, the deaths of Osama Bin Laden and Kim Jong-il, earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan, and rioting across the United Kingdom. Yet according to Google, the top global search for 2011 was the Royal Wedding, surprisingly followed by the iPhone 5 and the popular football game FIFA 12, revealing just how technology-obsessed the world has become.

A lot happened in 2011. Uprisings across the Arab world, the deaths of Osama Bin Laden and Kim Jong-il, earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan, and rioting across the United Kingdom. Yet according to Google, the top global search for 2011 was the Royal Wedding, surprisingly followed by the iPhone 5 and the popular football game FIFA 12, revealing just how technology-obsessed the world has become.