It’s 2020, and you’ve signed up for a weight-loss program. You’re alone on a Saturday night because your significant other is out of town, none of your friends are available to catch a flick at the theatre, and a pizza is sounding pretty good. You Google the address for your favorite joint and walk over instead of ordering drone delivery because it’s cheaper, and you’re old fashioned like that. Just before you order at the counter, however, your friend calls you to ask if you want to see a movie after all.See also:
How did this happen? An algorithm analyzing your communications and monitoring your friend networks learned that your partner was away, and your Facebook posts revealed that you wanted to see a movie but nobody was available. Sentiment analysis of your tweets suggested that you were feeling alone and a little sad.
Your networked fridge detected that you were out of kale. Your phone’s GPS and Google Maps decided that you were likely moving towards the location of the pizza shop you googled. The weight-loss program you’re a part of collected all these disparate points of data and notified your friend, who is also part of the program, and asked them to call you, suspecting that you might be experiencing a lapse of willpower. In other words, data has flowed through your social networks and gadgets to influence your routine behavior.
This is the future of behaviour modification, according to a series of papers in a recent special issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE, titled “The Digital Age And the Future Of Social Network Science And Engineering.” As internet-connected devices continue to proliferate, forming the backbone of the internet of things, the strategies of persuasion in the online world will bleed into the offline one....MUCH MORE
Nudge This: "Yes, You’re Irrational, and Yes, That’s OK"
