Talk:Persuasion technology/to 040424

''Talk:persuasion technology/to_031020 archives older talk (to the date 2003/10/20) about definition and factoring. Apologies for splitting a comment, but this was simply too long for some browsers, and causing glitches.''

User:Propagator continues...

I do not argue for adherence to strict scholarly terms. I advise instead regard for the basic precepts of scholarly consideration which include recognition of conventions in the use of language.

Other persuasion technologies:


 * Doors: intended to persuade people not to climb out windows.
 * Plates: intended to persuade people to eat politely
 * Art: intended to persuade people to feel aesthetic
 * Shovels: used to move dirt in ways that persuade people where to walk.
 * Glazed window: intended to persuade people to feel isolated from the weather, including wind, rain and cold air.
 * Salicilic acid: intended to persuade people to quit complaining of pain.
 * Sun glasses: intended to persuade people not to squint
 * Toilet paper: intended to peruade people not to spread dangerous biota.


 * This as you say is compliance or actual relief of irritation or hygeine - although it may be hard to say where this ends and persuasion begins... much pain relief works by placebo, which is persusasion certainly... and compliance.

Finally, the new politically correct opposition to presentation technology is interesting, but Tufte goes far beyond his expertise when he concludes that children should learn complete sentences rather than lists. Students have not stopped learning or using grammar. Students are asked to learn far more information now than students of yore, and improved communication can make their task easier. Bullet lists projected on the wall or written on a black-board then read aloud improve learning because they allow information to be stored as both visual and audio experience. This technology is as old as a mother holding her finger over her mouth while she "shhhh's" a child.

I think Tufte's is expressing some repressed bitterness over the life he chose in which he has to sit through scores of meaningless presentations to continue enjoying his large house, his electronic toys and ceaseless travel. How is it that PowerPoint is more offensive to him than the blood-bought oil he uses to make scenery rush past his automobile window?


 * Good question. But we don't know what he thinks of automobiles.  Marshall McLuhan already wrote about them in The Mechanical Bride, and there is also The Insolent Chariots of course.

Instead of complaining about bullet lists, maybe he should just cut his schedule to three days a week and cut his expenses. He has a choice he is not taking, though he is probably well-positioned financially, to escape the pull of PowerPoint.

Students now have another format more readily available, which as I recall was used long before MicroSoft purchased a software. Tufte allows MicroSoft's involvement to poison the well regarding presentation format and makes no effort to review literature which might suggest which format better suits human cognition.


 * Dare we suggest... actual affective learning?!!? Touch reinforcing self-enabling action, as opposed to sitting and typing and then talking AT others?

Of course cognition is malleable ... that's why I shower and dress well before a date. Presentation technology can be used to deceive, it can be used to persuade, it can be used to gain acceptance or it can be used to inform. Bullet lists and other mark-ups are available in the Wiki format, ostensibly because they can improve communication. Summarizing those purposes as "persuasion technology" hardly comprises a wholistic approach.

prpgtr


 * Suggestion: just as the Wikipedia article on this does, why not refocus the article here on reciprocal technological equality and (further) reciprocal linguistic equality?  Then one can deal with Wikis better - the linguistic edge of the developer over the author, mastering the programming language, and the author over the novice reader in the natural language, and the edge of both over those with no net access or the cultural skills to remain welcome as a wiki author?  All good cases in point...

The same author has demonstrated confusion about cause and effect dependencies between technology and globalization.


 * It would seem the confusion is Maynard's, and that regarding the nature of cause and effect itself. Advice:  review Judea Pearl's work on algebra of doing, and his resolution of Simpson's Paradox.

[http://www.SourceWatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Globalization&diff=5348&oldid=4527 Ref. here] where the claim that "Globalization promotes technology" is substantiated with the claim that "technology is absolutely required to hold together a global management regime in both the commercial and military sectors"


 * This is a dialectic but hardly contradiction. Technology can be both "required to hold together" and promoted by the thing it holds together.  What is your point?  Of course globalization promotes what is required to hold it together!  That is in the self-interest... of globalization.

in order to advance an article on Pro-technology propaganda. -mnrd


 * If you deny that globalization is advanced, and its beneficiaries, rich AND poor, have some interest in advancing, the very technologies that enable global debt and media and marketing, I don't know what planet you're on.


 * It's tiring to deal with someone who doesn't understand the difference between cause and effect, correlation, dialectic, reflexivity and recursion, on this subject. User:Maynard also suffers from deletionism.  Which of course would drive serious scholars away...

Well, we all live and learn. As I understood it, the fall of the Soviet empire was in part the result of technology - airliners brought people with fresh experience, personal computers expanded personal knowledge and authority, and fax machines allowed government critics to communicate more efficiently. Which comes first is a good question, but it seems humankind never tried to compile a "law of the sea" or other international regulations until technology created a need for that kind of management.


 * Very true. Technology creates the need, which then is filled by rules, that new technology is needed to enforce.


 * "The end of the world will come about in the following way..." - Pir-o-Murshid, Inayat Khan, 1922 - look it up...

It can be frustrating to debate the topic instead of contribute original material, but the writer does contribute as best they can from their understanding, so I don't attribute what appears to me to be a misunderstanding to malice. Out of the discussion, we might get a better grasp of the subject, and the writer might find better established sources that explain what otherwise appears to be an idiosyncratic view of one or a few individuals. As long as they play nicely, an agreement to disagree can make us stronger.


 * Yes, absolutely, and thank you for scrapping! factionalism is inevitable.  Improvement from the competition is not, unless we take some real care with each other's beliefs... and read each other's references.  Now I am at a disadvantage since I have poured about 20 of the best references out, and read few or none in return... care to indulge us poor trolls with your favourite sources?  Trolls thirst for truth...


 * And he indulges as follows...

Here is reference to meta-analysis of alcoholism treatment and several individual approaches in which the investigators reviewed the product of all qualified independant studies then, in some of their meta-studies, compiled those results with scores derived from qualitative analysis of each study.

http://casaa.unm.edu/projects/complete/ater.html

One of the studies authors, Dr. William Miller, is a champion of what is being called here "persuasion technology" though I dare say he has probably never uttered the term. He propagated the use of "brief motivational interviews" in clinical settings where behavioral changes were needed for the treatment of diabetes and heart disease, then applied the concept to the treatment of substance addiction (mostly alcohol at the UNM clinic, but also cocaine, heroin and polydrug addiction).

This example shows how individual studies of parts of a problem - related to persuasion and communication -- contribute to more wholistic studies. Meta-analysis only becomes possible in an environment where numerous and often flawed studies have been conducted, where they can be reviewed and then compared. The result of Miller et al's focused attention to a particular "persuasion technology" was a finding that some well-accepted technologies, especially self-directed self-help groups, were not as persuasive as their proponents claimed. (BTW, Miller was blocked from taking a seat on the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse. http://www.house.gov/reform/min/politicsandscience/example_substance_abuse.htm )

prpgtr


 * Very interesting! And well worth covering.  Yes, of course, persuasion technology can be quite socially useful.  That's why we have it!


 * We just have to *know* we have it...

This is getting too long to respond point by point, but I agree it might be a good idea to title an article "persuasion and technology" to discuss the promotion of various technological cultures and the persuasive appeal of technologies in general - under as broad a definition as would include native agriculture, common household items and high-tech items as persuasive. A article titled "persuasion technology" focused more on the persuasive application of specific technologies would avoid rhetorical confusion between at least that most general division - intentional use of technologies to persuade others of a rather specific idea, and the not specifically intentional effect of technology to appeal to users.


 * Yup.

A discussion of the persuasive appeal of technologies might invite advocates to plead a special case for what might be dismissively termed "technology" as a euphinism for unwanted mechanization. A careful analysis, though, can correctly identify the etiology of appeal related to all technology, and perhaps (eventually) provide an accurate biotechnical background for understanding the addictive appeal of some technologies,


 * Like EverQuest maybe. And wiki to some degree.  I notice that even people with no particular skills, no judgement, no knowledge and nothing to offer a wiki-based project but deletionism, do seem to get addicted to these projects and drive serious contributors away.  These little tin god sysop types were also a feature of early BBS systems...

and for understanding the enduring appeal of even some simple technologies.


 * Like guns. The ultimate persuasion technology, if we want to go that way.

As for the relationship of compliance technology and persuasion technology, there might be some real distinction to be drawn, but it seems a rather arbitrary matter, editorially. Some division is required simply to manage topics.


 * Yes, that's quite important. You can end up with a real mess if you don't slacken the rules on topic inclusion sometimes.

The term persuasion technology, as pure rhetorical concept, includes to some extent compliance, and to some extent the appeal of pervasive technological artifacts, but for discussions sake, each element can be analyzed in parts without damaging the integrity of the whole. - prpgtr