Extra Credit1: Media Equation

This chapter focuses on politeness. It is intersting to think about where all of our social norms have come from. Most everyone understands the subtlties of interacting with other people. In a summaraztion, being polite is trying to make everyone feel happy and comfortable and the way that you can make people feel that way is to think about how you would feel and what you would want others to do for you. This chapter is interesting in that it continues to bring this idea of being polite into the rules for computers. Are the rules social ettiquet the same for computers as it is for humans? This is where some awesome experiments can come in. Two rules have emerged from this.
Rule 1: When a computer asks a user about itself, the user will give more positive responses whan when a different computer asks the same questions.
Rule 2: Because people are less honest when a computer asks about itself, the answers will be more homogeneious than when a different coputer asks the same quesions.
Even though these are interesting findinge, I feel like I have read them before or it is just common sennse. In any case, we can use this information to effect media. Most people deny that they are polite to media, but that doesn't make it any less the case. Their responses were automatic. This proves that computers are social actors. It is important to then create media to be polite, but it is even more important to make sure that the media is not impolite. Designers can ensure this by borrowing results of social scientists who study politness. One great scientists that can be looked towards is H. Paul Grice. He narrowed down the rules for polite interaction by four categories: quality, quanitity, relevance, and clarity. This means that speakers should only talk about what is important on a level that is equal to the listener and that they should give a resonable amount of information - not too much or too little. Some other important facts to know is that it is impolite to reject something, it is polite to say hello and goodbye, it is polite to make eye contact, and it is polite to match the method of communication. The interesting part of politness is when you start interacting across different cultures and demographics. This is the case because in one cluture a gesture may be polite and in another the same gesture is impolite. So, the developer needs to make sure they know their audience. This chapter was really interesing. Most of the material I think I already understood, but it was cool to see how they put it into words and applied it to computers.

Extra Credit #1 Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter five in the book Why We Make MIstakes is mainly about how humans are horrible multitaskgers. The example that he used to start of the chapter is an intense one. I never really realized that that could actually happen. However, it shouldn't surprise me because I am very easily succeptable to tunnel vision. The accident actually had a phrase coined after it: "Controlled Flight into Terrain". In most cases, the flight crew had lost awarenedd of the situation inside the cockpit. This is similar to multitasking. Sadly, our brains cannot function like our computers which are so good at multitasking these days. However, when you actually get down to it, even a computer cannot multitask unless it has multiply processors. "It switched back and forth between tasks several thousand times per second, thus giving the illusion that everything is happening simultaneously." Multitasking actually slows us down and causes us to forget what we were doing. This reminds me of a study that I read about where a select group of people in the work place were not allowed to check their emails for a week. I believe this study focused more on social interaction in the work place, but the results highlight how much more effecient the workers are when they are not distracted by there email. What is probably the most scary about multitasking is the condition called "inattentioal blindness". This is where you can be looking direcltly at somehting and still not see it. This is why it is so crucial not to talk on the phone when you are driving. Your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. I was surprised to learn that " a single two second glance doubles the risk of an accident". This provides a great area of research of how to minimize the risk when driving but still being able to use devices like a GPS and a phone. A really cool device mentioned in this chapter is the Intelligent Driver Information System. This will block telephone calls when drivers are changing lanes or turning. This chapter was well written and kept my interest with the various examples that it contianed. It was also good to read this article to remind me the dangers while driving - especially since many people will be driving home this week.