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People Feel Loyalty To Computers

Posted by timothy on from the cognitive-dissonance-overcompensation dept.

stoobthealien writes "According to BBC News researchers have discovered that people have loyalty to specific computers because of a tendancy to associate "human attributes to them" - and I thought it was just me that speaks to my PC...."

3 of 476 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Unrequited love by lawngnome · · Score: 5, Informative

    HAL wasnt evil, he just got really paranoid because they gave him a complete set of instructions to carry out the mission in the event that the humans failed and told him to lie about it, which because he was designed to provide accurate information caused the conflict... this is explained in 2010...
    On a side note, is it just me or does the computer nerd that figures this out in the movie have something for hal? that long pause and "thank you hal..." at the end was creepy.

  2. Re:But they're all supposed to be equal... by Spoing · · Score: 5, Informative
    1. In a college computer lab, all of the terminals in a group are supposed to be identical and interchangable. However, it seems like users are building up a trust relationship with the computer they've used sucessfully before rather than wanting to take the chance with a computer they haven't met yet. It's almost as if users are presuming that most unfamiliar computers will fail on them...

    I had the same problem with department groups. By contract with the primary customer, the subcontractors were told "no departmental 'ownership' of machines not in offices". That meant specifically no pictures, no knick-knacks, all documents locked up in another room when the worker goes home. No labels on machines.

    Two things destroyed this idea;

    IT never got out of firefighting mode to impose standards.

    Departments and individuals immediately took the attitude "if I'm not here, others can use my machine" as if that would satisfy the contract requirements.

    Reasons for why this does not work -- and many machines and people ended up being idle -- were basically;

    Without being able to sit down anywhere (possible if IT did make that possible), people stopped trying to use just any machine and focused on one or a small group "in our area".

    People would stop working if a specific -- "my machine" mentioned above -- was not available.

    Add to this lack of customer interest and management, and this becomes a bit of meat to fight over when other tensions arise.

    --
    A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
  3. Re:But they're all supposed to be equal... by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, in Vegas, slot machines that look identical don't have to be. The key is in the PRNG (psuedo random number generator) chip installed in each. They don't have a "memory" of what they did last, but there are some PRNGs that are "looser" and "tigher" over time. Players can't exactly figure out where the looser machines are, however, because it'd take a large number of plays to notice a difference.