Category: technology
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Mid-90s Quotes from Wired
Kevin Kelly, editor of Wired, found an old file containing a selection of quotes from the first five years of Wired. This is a nice wander down memory lane, with Wired‘s trademark embracing of technology in the face of huge change quite evident (as well as some mid-90s prophesying, positivism, and–dare I say it–fear-mongering). Some of…
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Cialdini’s Principles of Persuasion and the Importance of Recognising “Enforced Compliance”
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is Robert Cialdini’s 1984 book discussing what he calls the six fundamental psychological principles of compliance: consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking and scarcity. The conclusion to Cialdini’s book points out why, in this increasingly complex world, resisting attempts at “enforced compliance” (deception) through these key principles is as important…
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Contextual Writing (Telescopic and Responsive Text)
How can a writer cater to an audience with diverse preferences and needs (particularly, how much detail they want and how much time they have)? One way is to use telescopic or responsive text. Telescopic text is a method of iteratively displaying more and more textual detail on request (I suppose the reader becomes the user). Joe…
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Why Software Development Estimation is Hard: Sea Lions, and Coastal Paths
Among the many valid responses to the Quora question of why software development task estimations are often off by a factor of 2–3, Michael Wolfe, CEO of Pipewise, describes exactly why this is without once mentioning ‘software’ or ‘project’. Instead, Wolfe eloquently provides undoubtedly the best analogy I’ve ever heard for explaining the difficulty in…
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Retreating to Study Technology’s Cognitive Impact
Five neuroscientists travelled into deepest Glen Canyon, Utah, to contemplate how technology has changes their behaviour. Some were sceptics and some were believers, and by taking this forced break from their computers and gadgets (there was no mobile phone reception or power) they were determined to find out whether or not modern technology inhibits their…
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The Demand for Product Obsolescence
Years ago (and still, for certain products) consumers decried the idea of planned product obsolescence in industrial design: the intentional engineering of products to have a limited useful life, such as with products produced with sealed-in batteries or fridges that will only function for seven years. In recent years, however, the need for planned obsolescence…
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A Primer on Behaviour Change
Three necessary elements must be present for a behaviour to occur: Motivation, Ability, Trigger — and understanding this is fundamental to understanding how to change behaviour. That’s according to B.J. Fogg and his team at the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab, as described by their Behaviour Model. To make behaviour change easier the team identified the…
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How to Internet: Epilogue
I’ve only scratched the surface of things that you may or may not want to do on the internet. I know that, I accept that, and I hope you don’t mind. Two things I might have liked to address but didn’t: podcasts and Twitter. These were both kicked in preference to what I did address…
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How to Internet: Publishing
As you get better at the internet, you’ll likely start to feel a desire to share something with the world. Thankfully, the internet is awash with technologies that make that easy and painless. Outside of Facebook, the can-be-used-for publishing platform that most civilians are likely to have heard about is Twitter, which hardly qualifies as…