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 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?
This cartoon reminds me of a Thanksgiving Day years ago. A colleague at work saw me at the supermarket. He looked in my cart and the only thing there was a frozen turkey. He shook his head and said, “You don’t believe in planning ahead, do you Jean?”
Actually I’m not as bad as that. We had been invited to have dinner with friends and I wanted to have leftover turkey. So I was buying one to cook later.
In general I hate being rushed, so if there’s something I need to do I try to do it ahead of time.
Expect things to go wrong, they usually take longer than we imagine.
That’s indelibly engraved in my psyche so I try to keep enough free time in my schedule to allow for it. What about you?
This carton reminds me of one of the classes I taught on Dealing With Difficult People. One fellow didn’t come to find out how to deal with other people who were being difficult. He came to get some ideas for how he could be more annoying to his boss. His attitude tickled me, and, truth to tell, I admired him. If anything I tend to be too accommodating. Still, there have been moments….
My favorite was when a summer student at work started berating me for something that annoyed him. I was surprised at his cheekiness, but he was 19, had just graduated from college and was about to enter graduate school. His success had clearly gone to his head. So I just laughed and told him, “If I had known it would bother you so much I would have done it a long time ago.” I don’t know if I ever annoyed him again. If it did he never mentioned it.
What about you? Have you ever had fun annoying someone? Has anyone ever enjoyed themselves at your expense?
