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People Feel Loyalty To Computers
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...."
What I feel towards my Windows box is something other than loyalty....
Sadly our computers seem less inclined to share that love...
"Open the pod bay door HAL...."
Three Squirrels
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...
If people can feel loyalty to something as unintelligent as an automobile, then it is not at all unexpected that they feel that way towards their computers.
This could lead to an over dependence on electronically-generated news and information.
Ground breaking stuff for slashdot.
next! <hits CTRL-R>
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Now we know which one had the hidden stash of pr0n!
All I know is, my computer has a much better fashion sense than this guy from Penn State...
(plaid on plaid! I mean einstein could do it, but that ain't exactly the same!)
In most college classrooms, professors don't particularly care to assign seats to anybody, yet students for the most part tend to seat themselves in more-or-less the same positions anyway. I wonder if this is related to want to have a favorite seat in the computer room.
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate it when you do that.
Just be careful... I've seen some Macintoshes go into a state of suicidial depression. First they start being sad all of the time, and when they're sad they're demanding attention before they'll work again. Then they start pulling bombs out of nowhere...
I don't think we have enough information to draw conclusions based on the article.
- Do the computers that folks were willing to wait for have additional applications loaded?
- Are they perhaps known to be the most stable ones out of a given set?
- Did different machines have different monitors, keyboards, and mice?
- Are they in a location that makes them more desireable (lighting, temperature, lack of people, etc)
There are plenty of factors that influence choices such as this. Unless they took steps to ensure that the computers were 100pct identical in every way, the conclusions they have reached are suspect. The extrapolations they make about people blindingly trusting computers even more so.
A computer is a tool. Just like an artisan may have a favorite tool for a task a user may have a favorite computer for a task. I don't see anything too earth-shattering here.
Of course, this also presents an interesting conundrum. My current computer has had every single part replaced since I bought the first iteration way back in 1998. Of course, not everything was replaced at the same time, but rather a gradual process of upgrades over the years.
So, is it really the same computer I started with? Or is it really some kind of sinister imposter only pretending to be my computer?
"A better advertising strategy might be to portray computers as something durable and reliable, something that grows with you," Prof Sundar told BBC News Online.
they can't do that. No, seriously.
This means that the industry would have to get off the treadmill of constant upgrades. It is no secret that MS is upset with the slow rate of people upgrading to XP. Most people now only upgrade when there is a definite need for it.
This would be the end of the world as they know it, and I feel fine.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
How many people name their computers? I do, and it takes me a bit to figure out names for them. I refer to them by their name usually, which causes my non-geeky friends to stare at me. Any one else does this compulsively? What is the name of your computer?
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
That didn't last long... Ten minutes and two trolls already. Experiment successful.
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
Spend a few minutes talking to any user of an Apple product and you'll understand that Apple Gets It on this topic. Macs, iPods, etc, are all very personable computers, with interfaces designed to feel very organic (like the pulsing, heartbeat-like glow on sleeping monitors / iBooks, rounded edges on windows, shadows, etc).
Dodge also Got It in a big way back with the Neon, though unrelated to cars. Anyone remember the ads that had the Neons bouncing up and down and saying "Hi!"? Anyone who owned a Neon knows that everything down to the horn's sound reinforces that image :) (Yes, I owned one of those too...)
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Habits are simply economically efficiently ways of doing things. For example, taking a certain route to work everyday means you don't have to figure out how to get to work each day. You save time and brain power.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that has certain places I prefer to sit. I'm comfortable with the view, etc, that they provide. Computers are simply an extension of that.
I visited my public library just yesterday. And I can assure you that there is plenty of bunk there too.
Those habits have been very usefull outside the lab and at other jobs but mostly when dealing with my parents. They have several computers and sometimes I have to troubleshoot over the phone. As they sometimes forget they switched locations of a coutple of computers since last I was there, it is VERY handy that I've gotten them to refer to computers by name (in this case we're using a Norse God Pantheon naming scheme, not Rocky).
Little Brother, watching the watchers
In the case of Windows, it's more likely to be Stockholm Syndrome than loyalty.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Techies should keep this in mind when dealing with their users. Good "computerside" manner really helps to ease users minds, make them feel comfortable with the CHANGES you are making, and getting them to (god I hate this term) "buy-in" to the ideas you are presenting. When you need support from these employees later it will be easier to come by if you have thought of their relationships with their workspaces.
I, and I suppose most techies, just think of a computer as a box of parts readied to be dumped as soon as any new piece of equipment comes along. The biggest pain to me is getting the configuration, not the data, moved from the old to the new. Users, on the other hand, don't have such an intimate knowledge of the inside of their machines and become attached to certain behaviours/modes of operation because they have attached those behaviours to ideas that they rely on.
They say things like, "After you boost the rams how will I get to word." One can either respond smugly, or, one can give the user words that make them comfortable. Of course upgrading ram will, at least in most cases, not affect things like access to applications. Instead of trying to educate the user with a technical diatribe simply say "This shouldn't affect your access to word, but we'll make absolutely sure before I leave, how's that?"
Of course this is slashdot, and I'm preaching to the choir. Given that I've seen SO MANY techs who don't recognize that a human touch would be beneficial to them, however, I felt a need to rant a bit.
plurvert
To see the implications of this, consider that people on a team--no matter how assembled--tend to regard their teammates as smarter than those not on the team. In light of the social roles of computers, a reasonable question might then be: Would individuals "teamed" with a computer think that the computer is smarter than would computer users not on a team?
In an experiment, individuals were told that they were being teamed with a computer to solve a task. (How do you foster team identity when the team consists of a human and a computer? You declare the pair "The Blue Team," give the human a blue wristband, decorate the computer with a blue border, and place a "Blue Team" label on top. I'm not making this up.) The human member of each team then worked with the computer to solve the problem. Other individuals received the same responses from the computer in solving the task, but were not told they were on a team. Those teamed with the computer rated the computer as more helpful and insightful than those who were not.
Through numerous other experiments, Nass and his colleagues have shown that computer "personality" and other factors can be manipulated to elicit positive responses to computers by their users. (One experiment demonstrated that humans seem to be suckers for computer-generated flattery.) For AI researchers, Nass made the point that users can be encouraged to perceive computers as intelligent through social strategies that have little to do with intelligence.
Those interested in learning more might read The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places in which Nass and Byron Reeves describe 35 experiments.
Humans have always felt a close relationship with the tools they use to get their work done. We have unearthed hunters from many thousands of years ago who were buried with their tools. You see people feel a kinship with their (book collection/music collection/car/favorite pair of jeans/lucky lighter/favorite pen) -- It appears to be in our nature to anthropomorphize things that we frequently interact with or associate with ourselves. We become accustomed to the particular quirks of these objects. The noises they make. The little things that need to be done to allow them to operate optimally. Why would computers be any different? I don't have a bow and arrow but I use my Sony Vaio every day to do my work. Human nature doesn't change just because the tools have...
Just my two cents...
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
But once a company tries to leverage it's market by playing on the established loyalty (i.e. coaxing Commodore 64 users to all gewt Amigas or long time mac OS Mac users to all switch to OS X) they may hurt their reputation even worse, as a loyal customer scorned they are in a good position to voice their opinions.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I have Linux on all my computers, and they are all very obediant -- not because I've beaten them into submission, but because we are very intimate with one another. They know the darkest websites I visit, and I know their most hackish source code.
This is what happens when you start giving them names:
My desktop is called "Morpheus", and my laptop is called "Trinity". My fileserver is "Tank", and my router is "Ninja". I have had a healthy dose of male bonding with all but Trinity, who is the sexiest little notebook I've ever seen. Every now and then, I compile kernels for a little male bonding, or get down and dirty with Trinity's video drivers.
The only other computer in this house is called "Dad", which is dual-boot Windows/Linux, and I have a more love/hate relationship with it. Dad is like a Jeckyll and Hyde, and will change with a single reboot from the nicest gentleman to the sickest, most twisted machine.
But really, if your computers don't love you, have you considered that it's because you don't treat them right?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
In college a roommate and I performed an exorcism on a new Compaq computer his parents sent up for him. After formatting it and cleanly installing Windows 98, we loaded Half-Life onto it since that was the all-the-rage FPS on the dorm network at the time. I'd run it dozens of times without incident and blasted away at the hallmates for hours. But this other buddy of ours, Rob, couldn't run it. If he clicked the icon, the computer would bluescreen. Reboot, he tries to run it again...bluescreen. Eventually we just either let him play from MY computer, or have me run HL (click the icon) before turning over the controls. I think he and that machine must have been enemies in a past life or something.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I used to turn of Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech on, then use AppleScript to reply to me. When I curse "Fuck you", it said "your place or mine?". See, even when I am mad, my Mac loved me. Geeks here probably recognize the reply from Matlab v. 5 and earlier. :)
You are not born with all the neurons you will ever have. Otherwise, your brain would be the same size when you're born as when you're an adult. This is one HUGE difference between human infants and those of other apes: our young are helpless because if they were born with complete brains, the birthing process would likely kill both child and mother (because we have large brains). It takes many years for your brain to be "finished" (18-20, iirc), after which it begins to (very slowly) die as neurons die and aren't replaced.
-"It seems like you're trying to exploit a security hole. Would you like help?"
A relevant quote on the subject:
Jokes always seem funnier to me when I don't get them at first reading -- yeah, I actually did have to look up "Stockholm Syndrome."