Respond – A History of Persuasion

The world we are experiencing now is surrounded by all kinds of technology. We spend tremendous time facing the screens: typing, reading, watching videos, scrolling the web pages up and down. Our attentions are constantly shifting across the technology platforms, and every other second, a notification could make us look immediately down on our phones for a minute or even hours.

The mechanism behind those technology is persuasive psychological tricks that try to manipulate and modify people’s behaviors all the time. The first part of the podcast A History of Persuasion introduces a story about how McConnell, a behavior psychologist, become famous and almost got killed by an Unabomber named Ted Kaczynski. Then in the second part, they further investigate the motivation of the Unabomber and how he was frightened by the idea of technology could modify people's behaviors and control human beings eventually. The last part shows us the history of Silicon Valley uses persuasive technology to change people's behaviors and get people more addicted to various platform.

In the podcast, it mentions B.J. Fogg, a behavioral scientist who creates the science of persuasive technology. Although he received many criticism from the public, himself declaimed that he should not be the one to be blamed. Every coin has two sides, he teaches the ideas also how to use those techniques ethically, but people who learn persuasive technology may intend to use it in an evil way. Everyday we wake up with notifications flushing into our phones and computers, I also notice myself form a habit of checking my phone from time to time even I mute most of the notifications. The fear of boredom and the desire of excitement stimulate my action of pressing the home button of my phone and opening the social media app to check what's new there. Endless new updates fragmented my attentions all the time. Just like when I am typing this blog, a new email notification "bing“ sound made me stop and check: another ads! Despite the disappointment, I need another minute to go down to the ads' button to find that tiny "unsubscribe" word to get rid of them.

It become almost impossible to reverse the spread and the impact of persuasive technology. Companies are trying to maximize their profits by getting more attentions and views, and almost none of the industries could really get a break from this culture influence. We are living a world where information is heavily overloaded and our human mind keep wandering in the information sea. I miss the time when I only checked my phone less than three times a day and people had to call me to reach out to me, and it was only 5 years ago. However, technology changes rapidly, so do our behaviors and habits. Maybe one day, we will find a way to navigate ourselves through this persuasive phenomena, or maybe we end up being consumed by all the technology we created.