<div style="text-align: left;">On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Christopher Rasch <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:crasch@gmail.com">crasch@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:</div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
An interesting article on how to build apps / devices designed for behavior change:<br>
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<a href="http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/journal/archive/summer-2009/features/new-rules-of-persuasion" target="_blank">http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/journal/archive/summer-2009/features/new-rules-of-persuasion</a><br>
<br>
>From Stanford's Persuasive Tech lab:<br>
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<a href="http://captology.stanford.edu/projects/behavior-wizard-2.html" target="_blank">http://captology.stanford.edu/projects/behavior-wizard-2.html</a><br>
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Chris<br>
</blockquote></div><br><br>Thanks... bjfogg's old ee380 "captology" talk is probably online as well... I'm kinda thinkin' that we ought to do an applied science fiction & social engineering book group and his stuff is on my short list...<div>
<br>Oh, and...<div><br></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; "><a name="backtotop"><table width="100%" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">
<tbody><tr><td><hr><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><font face="Gill Sans" size="2"><b>GET IN FORMATION</b></font><br></font></span></td>
<td align="right" style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://www.hackvan.com/pub/stig/pix/subversive/digital-overkill-guy.jpg" hspace="8" width="127" height="200" style="text-align: left; "><br><a name="backtotop"><br></a></td>
</tr><tr><td align="right" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><font face="Gill Sans" size="6" color="#000000"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Every day, computers are making people easier to use</b></font></td>
</tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Sit down. Put your feet up. Take a load off. Ahh, technology. Isn't that better? Its promise has long been freedom from drudgery, toil and ignorance. But a funny thing happened on the way to techno-utopia- the machines got the upper hand.</span></p>
<font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="text-align: left;">Optimism has given way to optimization: the shortest path, the fastest response, the fewest buttons to press to get to your voice mail. This hyper-efficiency is our god: but does our mad drive to make things faster have a higher purpose?</p>
<p>It was supposed to free us to be creative, to spend more time with friends and family. Instead, the spread of technology has freed us from our inability to send a fax from the beach. The myth of leisure is fading; there is no slowdown in sight. The speed of life demands more speed.</p>
<p>How enlightened.</p><font><p>Looking at it all from the inside, where we work with the latest gadgets every day, we've decided to bring our darkest fears to light. Why? Because the most visible critic of the high-speed technological age is a mad bomber with a bad haircut. Why? Because the magazine hailed as the guiding light of the digital age fetishizes high-tech the way Road & Track and Penthouse fetishize cars and chicks. Why? Because we can't remember the last time we heard a politician offer an intelligent critique of the information age. Remember, citizens, progress is not subject to political debate; it's, uh, like evolution, a force of nature.</p>
</font><b><font face="Gill Sans"></font></b><font face="Gill Sans"></font><p><font face="Gill Sans"><b><br>We got what we asked for</b></font><font></font></p><p><font>Human judgment is being outsourced to computer systems. Uniformity (ahem, "economy of scale") has all but crushed the family farm, the local newspaper, the mom-and-pop store, the regional dialect.</font></p>
<font><p>Do you smell something? A whiff of apocalypse is in the air. Perhaps it's the bad breath of government, corporations and libertarian ex-hippies who have joined forces to lead the cheers: "Digital revolution!" "Virtual communities!" "Third wave!" "Global village!" Feel queasy yet? Here at In Formation, we're feverishly clutching our air-sick bags, but we can't get off the plane. We can't even loosen our seatbelts.</p>
<p>To its pimps and apologists, technology has the force of necessity behind it, inexorable and unstoppable. Technology is progress, progress is change, change is good, om, om, om, the mesmerizing mantra drones on. The words"technology," "progress," "change," "good"- have become interchangeable. In the rare event that these assumptions are questioned, when the role of high-tech in our eight-cylinder, 300 MHz capitalism is scrutinized, the critics are labeled "reactionary," "dinosaur," "socialist" or "Luddite."</p>
<p>We have a confession to make. We actually like some of the things the new technologies can do. Computers and modems and shiny satellites certainly have their appeal. We would not have been drawn to create and write about new technology in the first place if it were utterly without merit. These new tools can create opportunities, establish lines of communication, and foster certain kinds of creativity. We acknowledge these benefits. But so does everyone else. And very few people with a public voice-namely politicians and the media- want to discuss the underlying insanity of this third-wave information age. But we do. Oh, you bet we do.</p>
</font><b><font face="Gill Sans"><p><br>The millennium is upon us</p></font></b><font><p>Maybe our profound skepticism is just a numerological virus. The approach of the millennium is a magnet for gloomy conspiratorial paranoia. Plagues, locusts, floods, and black helicopters: Why should our predictions of technological doom be any more credible?</p>
<p>While the cyber-visionaries rhapsodize about the unlimited possibilities of cryogenically frozen brain stems, digitized "Waterlilies" on the apartment walls, and sensorially enhanced cybersex, your employers have been busy installing security cameras in the bathroom and tracking the number of words per minute you key intoensurethehighestqualitypossiblewiththeminimumdisruption. Oh. Sorry.</p>
<p>We're constantly being dazzled by 30-second samples of the near future ("You will"), but the "future" of technology is already here, in the form of a society increasingly plugged into and monitored by machines.</p>
<p>The millennium is at hand. The high-tech future we ordered has arrived on schedule; too bad it didn't come with the glossy utopia advertised in the catalog.</p></font><b><font face="Gill Sans"><p><br>Take two of these and get back to work</p>
</font></b><font><p>Human workers can be so inefficient. We smoke cigarettes, we forward chain letters, we read the paper on the john, we decorate our computer screens with flying toasters. No wonder the wheels of profit turn ever increasingly toward mechanization. Come on, you've seen the ads-business can't wait! The competition is sending faxes to Tokyo and you're sitting with your thumb up your ass because you can't figure out how to transfer incoming calls! How many minutes per minute are you using? Only 2.3? What's your problem? No, don't answer that question- you're fired! Your call is now being answered by an automated voice response system.</p>
<p>We're also inefficient in our houses and schools. For this, technological modification of the inadequate human comes in little pills, too. Johnny can't sit still at his school desk for six hours a day? Give the little rascal a Ritalin. Or a Prozac. Ahh, technology. No need to talk things over; no need to change your environment or your life; it's easier to change your personality. The message is increasingly clear: Get in formation and do as we say, no matter how much your conscience rebels.</p>
<p>Here at In Formation, we see all these technologies, drugs, consumer pacifications and plastifications molding modern society into a perfect crystalline structure, free of the friction that comes from genuine human experience-no fuss, no muss- able to absorb monkey wrenches and Unabombers, able to humiliate its detractors, or even worse, throw money at them until they surrender. This emerging structure is a body and each of us is a cell, bound in a net of necessity to the other cells and organs, and unable to survive without being embedded in the body and receiving its control signals.</p>
<p>We're not with the program. Sign us up as the first cancer cells.</p></font><i><font face="Gill Sans" size="4"><p>—David Temkin and Alex Lash</p></font></i><br><table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr><td><hr><tt><b>this came from <a href="http://www.informationmag.com/" style="text-decoration: none; ">http://www.informationmag.com/</a> which seems to have had only two issues and may not go anywhere, but has online copies of it's articles</b></tt></td>
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