Slashdot Mirror
Are 'Nudging Technologies' Ethical?
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers are debating the ethics of so-called 'nudging technologies' — ambient technology systems designed to shape or influence human behavior, such as an installation which encourages people to take the stairs rather than the lift by using hanging colored balls to represent stairs vs lift usage. A researcher on the project said: 'Most people, when we asked them, "Do you think this has changed your behavior," they said no. But the data showed that it had actually done that.'"
Isn't this the goal of advertizing? To change people's behavior without them realizing it's being changed? Now we'll have all sorts of subliminal installations guiding us to the desired purchases.
-- Flame me and I will happily flame you back. Bring it!
To be pedantic, Those nudging technologies are being used to help people..but they could also be used for many things. They're tools.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nudging technologies have been around for as long as people have traded one good for another. Prices ending in .99, "buy one, get one free", and the ever popular "act now" are all examples of efforts to nudge someone to action.
It can only be a good thing that these subliminal forces are finally being harnessed to encourage positive behavior (e.g., stairs versus elevators or washing hands after using the bathroom)
The Fun Theory does this from time to time. My favorite is the piano stairs in Stockholm. It's a classic example of a "nudging" effect, and yes - I do consider it "ethical".
Of course, the question is if the "nudging" effect lasts over the long haul. I wonder how many of these people would have used the piano stairs after a few days, or a week?
Well seat belt laws go beyond advice and suggestion to the point of coercion (i.e. Don't do what -we- think is good for -you- and you will be punished), so I don't think that's a good example. But as far as this topic goes, I agree. No ethical issue at all.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
I actually wonder how susceptible I am to all of this, myself...
I hope everyone liked the post I made snowgirl make.
I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey
You're going to find an internship at a Disney park, right? The "social engineering" there is masterful, as well as the more ordinary engineering just to allow herds of people to move freely without getting in each other's way (I still find the Orlando airport the easiest big airport to move through thanks to their influence). For example, employee areas aren'tusually blocked by doors or even signs; instead the colors and architecture are carefully chosen to make customers feel uncomfortable, and nudge them back to where they're supposed to be, without explicitly marking areas "off limits" as you walk through the park.
I've had to deal w/ individuals who throw their newly emptied coke bottles into the trash when the trash can is directly next to the trash can.
Wel, eveyrone does that, but I also throw my everyhting into the trash can when it's next to the recycle bin, just for the joy of pissing off hippies, so be careful what you design (but then some jerks throw normal stinky trash into recycling bins where I live: now that sucks).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
But the story, if you chose to read it, would tell you that the research was conducted by a British university and the devices they monitored were in fact lifts. And to be pedantic, American is the regional dialect.
One of the examples from TFA is a set of colored balls, hanging in an open space by in a stairwell. The bright, cheerful balls represent people taking the stairs, and the grey balls represent people taking the elevators (lifts). There are pressure pads used to count people, and the counts are used to estimate stair usage and elevator usage. The colored balls are just a visual indicator.
According to the article, people say things like "You took the elevator... you are making the grey balls go up, you know" or similar.
And now, my point: the colored balls are not what people care about. People already have an opinion about whether stairs or elevator are "better" in any sense, and the colored balls display is leveraging that. I could use the same technology to track how many people look out the East window, vs how many people look out the West window, and I'm pretty sure nobody would care which color of balls is "winning" at the moment. The colored balls in and of themselves have no power.
I remember in Junior High School a teacher waxed philosophical about wrist watches. "Just think, we strap them on and then obey them. We rush through lunch because of them. A tiny and simple device can drastically shape our behavior!" (Probably a horribly inaccurate quote; this is a memory I haven't thought of in years.) Even at the time I rejected this thesis. It seemed to me (and still seems to me) that the watch itself has no power; it is the whole structure of civilization, at least where it is intersecting with your own life, that makes you care what time it is. If you took the watch off, you would still hurry through lunch, because you need to be done with lunch by some specific time. Indeed, without the watch, you might hurry more, since you might not be sure how much time you have.
The map is not the territory. Neither a watch nor colored balls nor any of the other stuff in TFA can compel behavior. Simple ergonomics can give a mild nudge; tricks that leverage things people care about can give a stronger nudge, but only because the people already care about something.
So the whole "ethics" thing is overblown. And as others have noted, that was one throwaway line from TFA; it's odd that it was chosen for the summary.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely