I just wanted to write a quick post about this because I think its awesome!

“Captology is the study of computers as persuasive technologies. This includes the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing products created for the purpose of changing people’s attitudes or behaviors.”

With the studies of captology and persuasive there has been founded three different types of persuasion platform know as the functional triad which incorporate computers as tools, computers as media and computers as social actors.

I will explain in the coming posts what computers as tools, computers as media and computers as social actors mean and what effect do they have on the industry

There are three types of persuasion technology know as the functional triad; which consists of computers as tools, computers as media and computers as social actors, these types of persuasion play a massive role in the industry today. I will be focusing on computers as tools and as social actors and not computers as media, as computers as media is not highly relevant to social networking. Computers as tools, “the goal of computing was to help us carry out complex equations and tasks such as text manipulation”. This is the first corner of the functional triad ‘computers as tools’.

There are seven different types of persuasion that is used in computers as tools, the first one is called ‘reduction’ this type of “technologies makes target behaviours easier by reduction a complexed activity to a few simple steps (or ideally a single step)”. If you purchase products on Amazon you can sign up for ‘one click’ shopping. With one click of the mouse the items you purchase are billed automatically to your credit card, packed up and shipped off”.

Reduction

The reduction strategy behind ‘one click’ shopping is effective in motivating users to buy things.
The reduction technology is everywhere, from having your entire social network in one place, to the ‘one click’ shopping. ‘Friendfeed.com’ offer a service where you can import all your friends from different social networks with one click thus reducing the time it would take you to manually invite all of your ‘friends’.

Tunneling

Tunnelling technology; this describes when someone is installing software on their computer and are waiting for it to complete, whilst that is happening there could be a interactive movie playing or just a movie offering services to the user or praising them on buying the selected software.

Tailoring

Tailoring technology, this is where information is tailored for you, “Information provided by computing technology will be more persuasive if it is tailored to the individuals needs, interests , personality, usage, context or other factors relevant to the individual”.

Google have also adopted this technology by displaying ads next to your email which are relevant to its content, it is not 100% correct but it’s still information which is tailored to you through the information in your emails. When people believe messages are tailored for them, they pay more attention e.g. the website scorecard.org provides tailored information in order to persuade visitors to take action against polluters. Scorecard.org uses language on its site which is present tense, like ‘pollution in your community’, this kind of language makes the user pay more attention to what they are reading. Of course there are some ‘tailored information’ which are there to mislead you in many ways , for example, to sign up to their online poker site or to submit your details and you can win money. I think the most common example of this would be the “congratulations you are our 100,000 customer click here to download your prize” In some respects this could be true but most of the time it is only a marketing ploy.

Suggestion

Suggestion technology, is where you create a product to alarm at a certain time to get someone’s attention, e.g. a teddy bear could contain a device in it that whenever it passes a MacDonald’s it could sing and dance about how much it loves fries which would make the child think about fries and nag the parents to get them some. Suggestion technology has many pros and cons in the previous example the dancing bear technology should take into consideration whether the child has already eaten and also the financial state of the parent, but my guess is if they have enough money to buy the bear they should have enough money for fries.

Yesterday I completed a 52 mile bikeathon for Leukeamia research I have been training for this event for a couple of months now on my single speed, as the event drew closer I was going to buy a mountain bike and put slick wheels on it but that plan did not pan out due to my bike being stolen and I was stuck with the dilemma of buying my single speed back or a mountain bike; I got my single speed back. As I made my way to the start line I felt the adrenalin start to flow through my body, I was nervous but why? maybe it was because this year I was doing 52 miles compared to this last year when I did just 26. I was looking around to see if anyone else had a single speed bike to my surprise there was a couple people with single speeds which made me feel so much better than I did before!

We started in Chelsea went to Putney then to Richmond common then finally to Ham common, this is the route I took last year so while I was doing it I thought it was rather east and I could do this no problem, there were even many refreshments stations but I did not want to stop too much!

After I completed my 26 miles back from Ham Common to Chelsea I decided to have a little rest as the next part of my journey was a city route where there was bound to be many cars not wanting to stop for one cyclist let alone 25-50.

Again I was stuck with a dilemma we were cycling in little groups of about 30-35 maybe and when the traffic lights went red I had to choose weather to go through them to keep up with the group in front but then be as the back of that group or; stop then be at the front of the group behind me. I did a bit of both. The really cool thing is depending on the route you took you had a different colour t-shirt, because I was doing the challenge ride I had a yellow one; I liked to stick with the yellow shirt riders more the other riders were a bit slow sometimes.

As I cycled to the city route my legs started to burn a bit put I pushed on and on, this route was far less fun then the previous route there was more cars and this route was not as clearly directed as the other one. I went from Chelsea to London eye then to the old bailey on to st Paul’s cathedral and so on. This ride part of the ride was much harder, but worth it at the end!

I had an amazing time cycling with so many people and just getting so much fitter out of it, I loved every second of it, and my good old single speed (Eleanor) did not puncher once even thought I was on tough terrain sometimes.

Cant wait till next year

How much did I raise check it out at my page Super Dwayne’s page

had a bike for years got stolen, so I bought another one for £239 it was in fact an SE Draft I purchased it from Evans cycles anyway I had this bike for 2 months then it also got stolen from outside my church St Marks. I then bought another one for again £239, so there I was with a brand new bike awesome then I get knocked off my bike which bent my wheels bummer, the lady who did it did not even pay for my wheels; but my home group which came from the alpha course got me some new wheels which was so awesome.

I had then to attach my wheels so I picked them up and took them to luciano cycles in Clapham Junction, When I went in they first charged me £5 pounds to take of the hub which was on the old wheel, then they said I could not fix the bike inside there shop I had to do it outside, at this point I just wanted to get my bike fixed so I was taking everything not too lightly; I soon realized I needed to buy new inner tubes because the new wheels was thinner, so I bought them then I struggled to take off the new wheels and put on the new ones, they did not offer my any help they all just watched me from inside there shop, they was rude and there attitude was like I don’t care about you or your bike; I was completly out raged I called someone to come pick me up and I went to halfords instead, all in all I will never ever go to Luciano Cycles, again.

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