Looking through my RSS feeds this week, I came upon a very interesting transcript from the radio show Talk of the Nation on NPR. During the show, Clifford Nass who is a professor at Stanford University spoke about his research on how humans interact with their computers. Nass is also the author of the book The Man Who Lied to His Laptop.
In this discussion, Nass brings up very valuable points about how we as humans are relating to our computers on a social level. Most of this discussion, in particular, discusses how people relate to their car’s GPS. One of the questions he asked was “how many of us yell at our GPS?” I found this especially funny, since I, too, just this morning yelled at my computer for being way too slow. Nass explains further how his research shows that we are all relating to our computers on a more personal level. It seems that some of us are forgetting that these are simply machines and have no mind of their own.
During his studies done on car GPS systems, it was shown how these computers really catch a lot of our frustrations. Many people found themselves yelling at their GPS if incorrect directions were given. Another interesting point brought out was that in Germany, carmakers would not use the voice of females on the GPS. Germans did not want to take directions given by women. Even after it was explained that women were not really giving directions to them, they still insisted that the voice be changed. When it comes to a happy GPS vs. a sad GPS, happy people seemed to prefer the happy voice and upset, angry drivers preferred the sad voice.
Overall, this was a great show topic and I felt it relates well to the information that we are discussing in class. We are surrounded by all of this technology and it is interesting to see how we as humans are relating to it. To listen to or read the entire transcript, go to:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129629756&ft=1&f=1049
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