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.)
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?
I do a lot of my shopping at amazon.com, so I’ve been well aware of its e-reader, the Kindle. It’s the first thing we see on its home page. I found that annoying because I assumed the main claim to fame for the Kindle was the number of books you could store on it. No thanks, I thought. I’ve had to deal with chronic eyestrain all of my life and have had to devise strategies to minimize reading printed material. The only reason I got through college was because I majored in physics, where you can get by with a little reading and a lot of thinking. I used the same strategy when reading, picking books where a little reading led to a lot of thinking and integrating the ideas into my everyday life.
When audio books and personal computers became available I was in hog heaven. The selection of audio books is far from perfect, but they certainly let me “read” a lot more books than I could before. And the internet gave me access to a lot more information. Enlarging the text and reading from a greater distance is a lot easier on my eyes. So why even think of the Kindle?
However…there were a couple of books I really wanted to read. One of them, A Primate’s Memoir by Robert Sapolsky, I was lucky enough to find in large print. That worked just find so I did research on various reading aids/magnifiers. And it turned out the Kindle was one of my best options. I can expand the print, not quite as large as large-print books but enough, and expand the margins so my eyes can see a whole line in a glance, which means I don’t have to keep moving them sideways along a line…the thing that really wipes them out. And some of the books have text-to-speech enabled, which means the Kindle will read to me. I tried that idea several times in the past, but the software wasn’t good enough to be pleasant. It’s improved a lot. The Kindle occasionally mispronounces words, but on the whole it does an amazing job. I’m now experimenting with using that feature as I read and it does make things easier. Anyway, my horizons in reading material is much broader than it has been, and I’m grateful.
What about you? Do you have any handicaps that you have to work around? What tools have you found that help?
I love my computer dearly, but I wouldn’t trust it with my life unless I had no choice. Unfortunately that’s not an option in modern cars. The manufacturers are replacing the old-fashioned brakes and accelerators with electronically controlled versions, which made us very nervous when we first heard of it. Apparently the technology was first developed by airplane engineers to improve reliability and lessen the weight of the vehicle, thus improving fuel efficiency.
My husband and I aren’t surprised that these electronic controls may be causing some of the recent Toyota fatalities. Given our experience with computers and electronic devices like DVD recorders, we’re more surprised there haven’t been more life-threatening glitches.
This past week Rummuser suggested I comment on a New York Times article with the catchy title Seeking a Cure for Optimism. The article argues against extreme positive thinking, the idea that if we just work hard and look on the bright side everything will go the way we want. That conclusion is like the one we came to last week, that having a positive attitude doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep our eyes open and our brains plugged in. Hopefully people who weren’t doing that before have learned from the recent financial crisis.
Let’s face it, it’s not an either-or thing. A positive attitude promotes creativity, flexibility and cooperation, and it motivates us to take action. On the other hand being more negative can cause us to gather more data, look for pitfalls and think more critically. We need both. Brainstorming is a good example. To come up with new ideas that are sound we need both the generative and critical phases.
The article points out too much negative thinking is “just as delusional as unquestioned positive thinking.” We need to encourage realism, to try to see the world “not colored by our wishes or fears, but by reality.”
Do you know anyone “at that age”? Do you know of anyone who never slips back to “that age”?
I for one still slip from time to time, but I am getting better at keeping centered in my values and not being tossed around by other people and external events. It’s a lifelong project and a fun hobby.
That’s probably why I was so fascinated by a New York Times article that B. Wilde told me about. The author, Laura Munson, had been practicing staying centered and it paid off when her husband told her out of the blue, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.”
Until then she had been feeling good about their life. In her mind they had achieved their dreams. They had created the life in the country they had wanted. They had 20 acres of land, a farm house and horses and dogs. They also had healthy children and were doing the family activities that would give the kids a chance to experience the world while building wonderful childhood memories.
So even though she was taken off guard, she didn’t react blindly. Instead she quickly regained her composure and said, “I don’t buy it…. It’s not age-appropriate to expect children to be concerned with their parents’ happiness. Not unless you want to create co-dependents who’ll spend their lives in bad relationships and therapy. There are times in every relationship when the parties involved need a break. What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?”
He reacted with hostility for about four months while she stayed centered and continued with the family activities without him. After about four months he joined them again. He had been going through a crisis with his work and as she said, “My husband tried to strike a deal. Blame me for his pain. Unload his feelings of personal disgrace onto me. But I ducked. And I waited. And it worked.”
It pays to practice being centered. You never know what might happen.
