Wireless Persuasion

So I read some more of the ol’ Persuasive Technology by BJ Fogg – this time chapter 8, which is all about mobile and connected devices. Fogg contends that people marry their mobile technologies. Given Clay’s nugget that the last two things people took to carrying around with them everywhere were money and keys, the most recent of those being invented in the 12th Century, I think it is useful to think of the commitment involved in taking something with you everywhere. You do it because it is something that makes sense in YOUR life.

Thus as Fogg points out, mobile technologies that seem to obey someone other than us (a phone texting us unwanted advertising) are likely to be seen as treacherous. It is hard to see a situation where mobile devices could be used to effectively market to people against their wishes. Not that that will stop people trying.

I also read the technology chapter of We Know What You Want. It’s pretty fun – there’s lots of talk about the data that’s held by online companies about their users and the ways that its used. We had a pretty weird talk in class last week where Rushkoff kept asking us whether high-tech persuasive methods were OK and didn’t want us to consider that fact that they depended on data being taken from us without our explicit knowledge or consent.

There’s a fun part at the end of the article with some descriptions of patents people have for mind-changing devices. Well it’s sort of fun, in that the idea of it is fun, but in reality the ideas and the way they’re described is quite boring. I guess bureacratic language is tiresome even when it’s describing a device for remotely monitoring and changing brain waves.

An example of a coercive hi-tech tool I think works is Flickr. I’m using coercive in the Rushkoff sense combined with Fogg’s notion of persuasive technology being used to change people’s behaviour to help them achieve their own goals, or at least get them to behave in a way they enjoy.

Fogg enumerates four theories of social influence that can change people’s behaviour, and I think most apply to Flickr.

1. Social Facilitation – to my eyes at least it seems that Flickr encourages people to take more photos and upload them more quickly. Often the photos of TNO or some ITP party are on the web before people have even had a chance to sober up. You’re looking at pictures of yourself wearing the same clothes drinking a drink you just finished before you’ve gone to bed. The fact that there are so many people with cameras, so many people with Flickr accounts and so many people prepared to look at your photos once taken is a powerful incentive to get snapping and get Flickring.

2. Social Comparison – the Flickr thing is definitely a “thing we do” at ITP. It is almost assumed that one has a Flickr account and a digital camera and as such it is something that that any benchmarking of oneself against others in the group is likely to lead to the conclusion that using Flickr is a behaviour to be adopted. I certainly feel I should adopt it, even though I find it annoying when cameras play too big a part in a party.

3 Peer Pressure – I don’t think there’s much of peer pressure associated with Flickr in the contexts I’ve seen it used, although it would certainly be possible in the right (possibly teenage) hands to use someone’s Flickr account to put pressure on them to behave/dress/express themselves according to the preferences of an in group.

4 Social Learning – Because Flickr is a social software, consistent regular use of it can bring large social rewards in terms of visibility. This is a very noticeable reward of the service and is likely to encourage others to join in.