Task 10: Attention Economy

Task 10: Attention Economy

Based upon this week’s videos and readings, the word ‘control’ really hit home. We have come to a place in social media and technology use where thoughts and feelings can be controlled unconsciously.  We are conditioned when we log into a variety of sites to feel a certain way without knowing the why behind the scenes. The choices of a small number of people working for these companies gain a lot of control over the individuals on the sites. The control that they gain over us affects us in many ways. It affects the choices we make when it comes to purchasing products, political values,

“How do you ethically steer people’s thoughts” – Tristan Harris (2017)

Ethical control over individuals is becoming more talked about as more people are becoming aware of this.  Web designers can really ‘steer’ us to think a certain way but the way their site functions and notifies us. Is this ethical? If we are agreeing to be on the site, are we agreeing to this unconscious control?

The intention is another part of us that is controlled using technology in our lives. Harris talks about when we receive a notification and all of a sudden, we have intended thoughts and schedules that we did not have before. A small notification can make a huge impact by just popping up on our devices. It can change our direction in a multitude of ways.

The Task

That was without a doubt the most annoying form I have ever had to fill out. The number of tricks on there that I fell for was almost embarrassing. After the first two pages, I did start to look at the questions in more depth to try and complete them.

Some of the ways that were able to manipulate my attention

• On the ‘human validation’ part, they purposefully put the boxes that you check off closer to the bottom than the top of the image, however when looking at the top of the page you could see which ones you needed to click off
• The little pop-up window at the bottom of the screen was frustrating as it purposefully blocked areas that you needed to fill in and when you wanted to minimize it, it would at an extremely slow speed.
• The colours that they chose for certain buttons were the opposite colours you would expect them to be, thus tricking your brain (cancel was green)