I got this off another list(Psychiatry)
From Wired News, available online at:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,34526,00.html
Fiddling With Human Behavior
by Lynn Burke
3:00 a.m. 6.Mar.2000 PST
PALO ALTO, California -- B.J. Fogg raises his long arm and thrusts a
six-pound infant doll into the air.
"This is a persuasive computer," he says. "It may not look like it,
but it is."
Hear the News? You can listen to this story.
Learn more in Making the Grade
Read more Technology news
Discover more Net Culture
Fogg is the director of the Persuasive Technology Laboratory at
Stanford University, where academics study technology designed to
persuade people to alter their thoughts or behavior.
In the case of this doll, called Baby Think It Over, teenagers are
encouraged to change their attitudes about sex and pregnancy.
The baby is a tech variation on the "carry an egg" pregnancy
prevention program once used by teachers to make their young charges
think twice before indulging in any hanky panky.
But instead of toting around an egg wrapped in a towel, the student
carries a life-like vinyl baby programmed to have a distinct
personality and cry at random intervals. The crying can only be
stopped when its "parent" inserts a key into the control unit on the
doll's back.
And when the experiment is over, a detailed record of the student's
performance is printed out, revealing such perceived abuses as neglect
and shaking.
Fogg believes this kind of persuasive technology is the wave of the
future. And he thinks it can be a little bit scary.
"I believe persuasive computing has significant potentials and
pitfalls," Fogg said. "There really is a dark side."
In a one-room laboratory tucked away on the edge of Stanford's
expansive campus, he works with students to cook up the darkest
technology they can imagine.
Graduate student David Starke, 23, and his classmates have come up
with their idea of the perfect persuasive technology -- jealousy.com.
At the fictitious site (which has no relation to the actual
www.jealousy.com Web site), a jealous wife is taunted with provocative
phrases like, "Do you know where your husband is?"
Once convinced of a probable infidelity, the suspicious missus
registers for a service that will scan her husband's email for
selected keywords, like "sex," "passion," and "kill." The service uses
a Trojan horse that she has sent to her husband in the form of an
innocuous-looking e-greeting.
Every time her husband receives an email with one of the selected
keywords, jealousy.com will intercept it and deliver it to the
broken-hearted -- if vindicated -- wife. And slap her with a bill, of
course.
Although the aim of the program might be considered moral -- to reduce
infidelity -- its means of persuasion are highly questionable.
Starke says he and his classmates got the idea for their project from
DoubleClick, the Internet ad firm that has come under fire for
collecting personal information from users.
"We said, 'What can we do that's really unethical?'" he said, adding
that the question is an important one to explore.
"If you understand how people are trying to manipulate you, you can be
better informed and make sure you're not being taken advantage of," he
said.
A scenario like jealousy.com is not that far off, Starke says.
"I think that one of the things that is scary about it is it's so easy
to do," he said.
His teacher agrees.
"I think the value of pushing things to the extreme is so that we can
ask, what's like this but not quite so obvious?" Fogg said.
Jason Tester, a senior who works in the lab, spends hours asking this
same question by combing the Internet for real-life examples of
persuasive technology.
One of the best examples he's seen so far is the Hygiene Guard, a
device designed to spy on workers in the bathroom.
The system works with small badges worn by workers that pick up a
signal from a sensor in the bathroom. The sensor makes the badge
blink, and the blinking only stops when the employee pumps the soap
dispenser and runs water for 15 seconds. Ignored blinking incidents
are recorded.
Like most of the persuasive technology studied here, the Hygiene Guard
has a noble intent -- to increase hand-washing and reduce the spread
of germs -- but its methods raise questions and objections.
Though Tester and other students spend lots of time considering the
evils of persuasive tech, they are the first to admit it's not all
bad.
They've come up with several ideas that would use persuasive
technology for nobler aims, such the system they designed for
bathrooms called the Optilex.
A small device that runs on a tricked-out Palm Pilot and a couple of
AA batteries, the Optliex is a screen placed above a urinal that
flashes a new vocabulary word, its definition, and an example of the
word in use whenever a guy steps up.
"We're trying to preempt the grout-reading time," said Erik
Neuenschwander, who co-designed the device.
"If we exposed a closed community of people to positive, 'happy' words
on a daily basis, would their behavior change?" Neuenschwander asks.
The theory behind his experiment is based on the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis that says language determines thought.
But Palm Pilots are pretty expensive, so there have been no studies
yet.
The study of persuasive technology, called "captology" by researchers
here, is a young science. Stanford is the only university in the world
known to be studying it.
But Fogg says as the Internet grows as a vehicle to change what people
do, people will have to start paying attention in order to protect
themselves.
"Persuasive technologies are here," he said. "More are coming."
--
|
