Stanford Professor Clifford Nass has been studying computer-human interactions for years. He and fellow researchers noticed that even technically sophisticated people tend to react to computers as if they were human. For instance, when the car manufacturer BMW installed advanced navigational computers in some of its cars a decade ago, it had to recall them. Not because the devices didn’t work well, they worked just fine. But the company received too many irate phone calls from German males who insisted they would never take directions from a woman. It didn’t matter that it was just a woman’s voice, that the computer was gender-neutral. The device/voice had to be changed.
The researchers also noted that if people used a teaching program on a computer for a half an hour and then were asked to asked to evaluate the program, the results depended on what computer they used. If it was the one they used for the instruction the marks were more favorable than if they did the evaluation on another machine. It was almost as if the evaluators didn’t want to hurt the computer’s feelings.
So developers have been trying to make computers seem more friendly and trustworthy by building on this human tendency. Nass believes in some cases they’ve done a remarkable job. In a recent Wall Street Journal article he writes,
Indeed, we may be reaching the point which our technologies are actually more socially effective that our colleagues…. It would be ironic if in the future, people will be turning to computers to learn how to win friends and influence people rather than the other way around.
I’m keeping an open mind on this. I know plenty of humans who aren’t that socially adept, but I haven’t yet interacted with computers who are that sophisticated. When I encounter a phone menu I appreciate friendly computer voices, but I usually try to get to a real person as soon as possible. That doesn’t mean I doubt Nass’s word. Eventually I plan to read more about his work in his upcoming book, The Man Who Lied to His Laptop.
What do you think?
I’ve read a number of articles lately about the effect of well-behaved, friendly dogs on people. Our local paper had one saying Santa Fe, New Mexico is now one of the communities with a reading dog program. The dogs are specially trained to help children improve their reading and communication skills by being supportive as the children read to them.
Then the August 10, 2010 Economist had an article entitled Manager’s Best Friend. It explains that the presence of a dog can help groups at work be more cooperative and effective in solving problems.
But the article I enjoyed the most was this one by the
Best Friends Animal Society. It demonstrates that it doesn’t have to be a real dog to have a profound effect. A picture can have magical effects too. A woman with Alzheimer’s disease had been slipping away from her family until she received a card with a picture of a happy dog with a cat draped over its head:
Now, when 87-year-old Sarah Harrell looks at the card with the photo of a “happy, smiling puppy face and tiny kitten draped over its head, she becomes happy, animated, alert and close to being our old Mom again,” Judy says. “Because she so loves the photo, I have it in a frame, and she now keeps it on the table near where she spends much of her day.”
I can understand that. Seeing a dog walking with its owner downtown always lifts my spirits and warms my heart. But so does looking at our Golden Retriever calendar and seeing the pictures on the Daily Puppy. It’s not quite as good as the real thing, of course, but it’s surprising how much it helps for those of us who don’t have pets.
What about you? How do you lift your spirits and warm your heart? How do you bring out the best in yourself?
Will the internet replace books? Not likely. I personally buy more books than ever now that I have access to Amazon.com.
I’ve always loved to browse in bookstores and libraries, but we live in a small town so our bookstore has a limited selection. And while our library is excellent for a town our size, it was a letdown from Cornell, which has one of the best university libraries in the country. When I was there I spent many a happy hour browsing the stacks, finding treasures I didn’t even know existed.
But I adjusted. Our library had a database called Books in Print which could be searched by topic. It didn’t give detailed descriptions of the books so I would generate a list of books on a topic and fill out requests for interlibrary loans. Weeks or months later I could look at the books, assuming one of the libraries in the system had it and was willing to lend it out. It was a tedious process, and presumably expensive for the library, but I was impressed that the libraries were willing to go to the trouble.
Then one day I asked for Books in Print and was told the library no longer subscribed to it. It was now hooked up to the internet and was using Amazon.com for information about books. That was how I discovered Amazon.
So now I spend many a happy hour browsing for books on Amazon as well as for information on the rest of the internet. If a book is expensive I sometimes still request an interlibrary loan so I can see for myself if it’s worth buying. But often I can get a new or used one for a reasonable price on Amazon and simply buy it. When I’m finished with it I give it to Friends of the Library. They sell it at their bookstore for a nominal price, which means I can share the books with other readers and also know I’m helping to give the library money for more items and services. It warms my heart to be a part of the book lovers’ community.
Will the new e-readers affect the sales of books? My guess is it will make them more accessible. Already some authors are publishing digitally instead of going through the discouraging business of trying to find a print publisher. In some cases the big publishing companies will buy the printing rights after the book has generated enough interest digitally. And some authors have realized that if they publish digitally they can reach more readers and make a bigger profit if they lower the selling price. That’s a new revolution that is just getting started, but it’s a healthy trend I think. Newsweek has just published an article on the subject.
What do you think? Do you think the internet will help or hurt book reading?
I haven’t read the book, but in The Shallows Nicholas Carr argues that the internet is ruining our brains for deep contemplation. He worries especially what it’s doing to the minds of our youth. My experience is most people have never been great ones for deep contemplation, and for those of us who love to ponder ideas the internet is a blessing not a curse. It just gives us more information to fit into our mental picture.
I’ve always liked to play with ideas and have never had problems with concentrating…tuning out distractions. I still remember when I was a teen studying my Spanish homework and boiling some eggs my mother wanted to include in our dinner. Just before my mother came home from work I noticed this horrible smell—hydrogen sulfide from burned eggs. Oh dear. I shut off the stove and tried to air out the kitchen but of course it was hopeless. When my mother walked in the door she yelled, “How could you not have noticed!” I was concentrating, of course.
What can I say? My poor mother wasn’t nearly as enamored of focused attention as Carr seems to be.
What about you? Do you think the internet is distracting or does it give your life more depth?
Dogs were the first animals to be domesticated…about 15,000 years ago. One of the latest theories is that they started the process themselves. The more curious, less shy ones started raiding human garbage, which gave them an evolutionary edge. The humans realized the heightened senses of the dogs and their ability to give early warnings of intruders made them great to have around. The synergistic relationship progressed from there.
Cats, on the other hand, have only been domesticated for about 9,500 years. As we can see from this video, they’re not quite as good at warning of intruders.
That doesn’t mean cats aren’t nice to have around too. They’re currently the most popular pet in the world.
How do you feel about dogs and cats?
(Thanks to bikehikebabe for telling me about the video.)
If you’re trying to change human behavior through laws, you’d better be careful how those laws are written.
We’ve already talked about this, and the city of San Diego, CA has just given us a great example. The city was spending a lot of money because of beach parties…dealing with the drunkenness and cleaning up the litter. So they outlawed alcohol on beaches, defining a beach as “the sand or land area bordering the water of an ocean or bay.”
Did that solve the problem? No, it made it worse. The partyers simply moved onto inner tubes, air mattresses and inflatable rafts a few feet from shore. So the city was still stuck with the drunkenness and litter but also had to add more life guards… to rescue any reveler who slipped into the water and was too drunk to save himself. Needless to say the city is going to amend the law.
I can’t help wondering, though, should they have spent that money on lifeguards or should they simply have given posthumous Darwin Awards to those partyers who managed to do themselves in?
What do you think?
The big news here in the states is that Congress just passed a 2300-page financial reform bill, the goal being to prevent another financial crisis like the one we just went (are going?) through. Am I hopeful? Not really, but I wish us all luck. Unfortunately lawyers are already poring through the bill looking for loopholes…it’s hard to believe they won’t find them.
In my lastest post at Transforming Stress I mentioned that Virginia sells special license plates to promote and help fund its program against domestic violence:
Some clever fellow ended up spoofing the program by spending $10 extra to personalize his plate:
And the latest issue of Stanford Magazine had another relevant story. It was written by a fellow who attended Stanford in the early 1960′s. He had a wealthy Indian friend whose father had made his fortune importing goods from America. It turns out at that time America was still producing material goods rather than importing them and there was a good market for them in India. The problem was customs duties were extremely high and ate into profits. But there was a law saying if a shipment of goods hadn’t been claimed within 30 days it would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. So the Indian student’s father bought a large number of shoes and shipped the left ones to Bombay. He waited the 30 days and bought them for a song, since no one had any use for left shoes. Then a month later he shipped the right shoes to Calcutta and after 30 more days bought that shipment. He made a bundle by using the law to his advantage.
Do I believe financial firms won’t do the same with this new legislation? Not on your life. But on the bright side, it will help employment by creating more government jobs.
In case there was any doubt about people being crazy, the Wall Street Journal recently ran an article entitled Fowl Fans See Golden Eggs in Catering to Pet-Chicken Market,
Niche Sales Include Toys, Saddles and Diapers; Costumes for Phillip and Suzie. It includes some pictures of well-dressed chickens as well as a link to a slide show. Apparently the fowl business is thriving.
More than $3 billion in cash has been openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years, a sum so large that U.S. investigators believe top Afghan officials and their associates are sending billions of diverted U.S. aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad.
The chairwoman of the House subcommittee responsible for foreign aid said she was stripping from pending legislation $3.9 billion in funding for Afghanistan following revelations that billions of dollars, including large amounts of U.S. aid funds, were flowing out of the country through Kabul’s main airport.
“I do not intend to appropriate one more dime for assistance to Afghanistan until I have confidence that U.S. taxpayer money is not being abused to line the pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials, drug lords, and terrorists,” Ms. Lowey said.
Do you think the Congressional hearings will uncover anything? If so, do you think they will do any good?
Years ago “I’ve been agin’ ‘em all” was my husband’s and my favorite joke. The world has probably deteriorated even more since then, but at the moment I’m having too good a time to worry about it. I’ve already mentioned the Kindle, that boon to sore old eyes, and this week I’m using it for more than the books I buy at Amazon.com. If I send my own PDF files to Amazon it will send them back to me in the Kindle format, including the option of having the Kindle read them to me. Talk about miracles!
(In the above graphic ReadIris 12 converts paper documents into text, which I can then print out as PDF files.)
So that’s how I’m amusing myself as the world goes to hell in the proverbial hand basket. What about you?
