An opinion: heavy use of
computers alienates us, is a
manifest of desperation and lack
of “meaningful” human contact.
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But… most of us treat computers
as if they were human.
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Marta Paciorkowska
Likes weird stuff
Has twitter: @a_meba
Blogs on occasion: https://thatmarta.wordpress.com
Owns the command line at Acrolinx GmbH
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Clifford Nass
Was a pretty cool person
Worked with other cool researchers
Sociologist interested in interactions between humans and computers
Wrote The Man Who Lied to His Laptop and What Machines Teach Us
About Human Relationships
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THE EXPERIMENTS
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Multitasking
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Multithreading:
the ability of the CPU to execute
multiple processes concurrently, or
an execution model that allows one
process to have more than one
thread.
Multitasking:
the ability to handle multiple tasks
at once
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“Frequent multitaskers find it very difficult to
focus, even when they are pried away from
technology. (...) They fail to notice emotional
signals in people’s voices, faces and posture.”
Clifford Nass, The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, p. 12
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“even brief mental blocks created by shifting
between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of
someone's productive time”
http://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask.aspx
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Even when frequent multitaskers
focus on doing just one thing,
the use of their brain is less
effective.
Details at http://business.time.com/2013/04/17/dont-multitask-your-brain-will-thank-you/
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Being forced to multitask:
is a manifestation of an underlying organizational problem,
can be caused by:
➔ too much work,
➔ understaffing,
➔ suboptimal prioritization,
➔ ...
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Ban laptops
on meetings
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Meeting>Slack*
* special conditions apply
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You speak computer
...but you’re not one
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Computer = friend, literally
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The experiment:
Two groups of people,
Both perform the same task on identical computers,
One group fills questionnaire on the tested computer,
Other group fills questionnaire on another computer.
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“users entered more positive responses on the
computer that asked about itself than they did on
the separate (...) computer.”
Clifford Nass, The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, p. 7
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Power
to the people
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Empathy
is a strong word
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Emotional attachment to
computers, tools and software
makes us more reluctant to
change.
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The opposite team
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The experiment:
Read team, blue team,
Color-coded, identical computers,
Team members perform tasks,
half on “own” computer, half on “rival” computer.
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Surprise: people rated “their” computers higher
than those of the opposite team.
Details in Clifford Nass, The Man Who Lied to His Laptop
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We are the Borg.
Your distinctiveness will be added to our own.
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Ops vs Devs: a false dichotomy
that creates identity by exclusion.
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Critical = smart
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The experiment:
A tutoring computer presented facts and asked how well users knew
them,
A testing computer ran a quiz checking what participants learned,
A grading computer asked to rate the tutoring computer,
Half grading computers were positive, the other half - critical.
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The grading computers that were more critical
scored lower on likeability but higher on
intelligence.
Details in Clifford Nass, The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, p. 45-53
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“Only pessimism sounds profound. Optimism
sounds superficial.”
Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile,
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/01/21/why-does-pessimism-sound-so-smart.aspx
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Genius assholes
have to go
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THE TAKEAWAY
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we think we’re like computers,
while we actually aren’t, and
we think we’re rational when
working with computers, while we
actually aren’t.
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Thank you for listening ♥
Catch me on Twitter: @a_meba
Find written talk version with links to research on my blog:
https://thatmarta.wordpress.com
Talk to me!