Rhetoricus Algorithmica: Persuasion in the Age of the Database

The latest issue of WIRED has a column by Eli Pariser called “Mind Reading: The new profiling technique that learns exactly what makes you tick–and buy.” In it, Pariser explains how internet advertising is moving beyond the state of simply suggesting products you’re likely to be interested in (determined by browsing habits, purchase history, and so on); soon, thanks to folks like Stanford communications grad student Dean Eckles, we’ll be subjected to targeted advertising pitches for those products. Swayed more by appeals based on ethos (your favorite author endorses this book, so buy now!)? A sucker for argumentum ad populum (hey, everybody else is getting one, so how about you?)? Easily influenced by emotional appeals (buy this DVD or the kitty gets it!)? Now marketing execs won’t have to trouble themselves with the hard work of figuring out the complexities of effective ad pitches… computers will do it for them. Wasn’t this how Skynet got started?

Read the article here.
Visit Dean Eckles’ site here.

data, aesthetics, and rhetoric

I ran across this very cool visualization of debt statistics (from David McCandless’s Information is Beautiful collection) yesterday:

Cool, right? It’s a smart way to present the info, well-executed, even charming for Gen Xers. It’s the Tetris narrative (enhanced by the accelerating tune) that seems ripe for rhetorical effect, I think. But when I showed it to my (logical) partner, he immediately called out the problem: It has no argument. The numbers, while striking in contrast, have unclear relationships and have been selected, or at least arranged, without seeming to have a point… which may not have been the goal of the creator, obviously.

But imagine the kinds of sweet rhetorical work could be done with such creative approaches to representing sharing data…

FaceTime

Have you gotten Apple’s email about the new iPod Touch? Allow me to direct you to this part advertising their new FaceTime application:

Now, is there not a better marketing strategy here? Seriously!? Part of the point of using an instant messenger is that it is text based. Some people like the fact that they don’t have to talk to or see the other person. It makes it more convenient if you’re, say, in the middle of a meeting or in an extremely noisy place. There is a reason why instant messenger still exists and is used.

Why, why, why would you use commentary that points to people that are not likely to use that particular application? Wouldn’t a better appeal have been, “Hey, you can use FaceTime on WiFi, which can dramatically reduce your phone costs!” That’s the thing that intrigues me. Also the idea of a Skype-like conversation, but without the bulk of an entire computer is quite tempting, but I’m of the population that likes Skype. My IMs? I stay hidden in every single one.

How to Target Your Audience Part 2

Ever lost your camera? Didn’t know how to get it back? Well, please do check out “How To Get Your Camera Back When You Lose It.” You’ll enjoy it.

Counter-Persuasion

So, I like ProfHacker. For realsies, it’s one of the few blogs where I read 75% of the posts (it used to be a lot more before they changed their rss feed to only preview the articles). Part of what I like about that blog is that they deal with what I’m going to call, right here, right now, without knowing if there is actually a term out there: counter-persuasion.

It’s like this: our things (supposedly, at least) are made to engage us, but when these things are too engaging we can suffer from the consequences of being distracted from the things we’re supposed to be accomplishing. When I avoid writing because I’m on facebook, it’s because, well, facebook is just so engaging. Or email. Or tv. Or whatever. So, ProfHacker posts such articles as “6 Ways to Avoid Letting Your Computer Distract You.” This article is specifically reporting on programs which aim to reduce or eliminate the technological things that lure you into using them: email, internet, social networking sites, etc. The distracting devices/services/sites cannot persuade you into interacting with them because of these programs which eliminate the distraction altogether. You know where I’m going with this. That’s right, say it with me now: counter-persuasion.

These programs are made specifically to counter act the persuasive temptations that exist with current technology. If you could see the image in my head when I think about this, it looks something like this:

Original photo via Bruce Turner, flickr

But, I digress.

More or less, I like the cyclical idea here that the software itself is persuasive because it’s reducing the temptations and persuasiveness of other softwares; that the use of counter-persuasion is persuasive itself. It’s a bit convoluted, I grant you, but cool nonetheless.

Synthetic Identity

If your friend, co-worker, family member conveniently leaves their facebook open, resist the temptation to mess with said friend, co-worker, or family member by posting odd/offensive/misrepresenting posts or blocking them out of their account. According to Time, a mother was fined for getting into her son’s account and then blocking him out of it. Of course, as with most things, there seems to be more to their relationship than just this instance as the mother “is also no longer allowed to see her son, who has lived with his grandmother for the past five years.”

By this point, you probably understand that I find facebook utterly fascinating. In this instance, she was charged with harassment, but why not fraud? Or defamation of character?

Just to get this part out of the way, I do not believe that having this woman convicted will mean that parents everywhere will have no supervision over their child’s internet activities. This particular case seemed to have a particularly high level of what was determined to be harassment. The actions appeared to be severe and, therefore, the punishment matched. Forbidding a child to use or post certain things in his or her facebook would not be the same thing.

But on to my thought. Wouldn’t inhabiting someone’s profile and misrepresenting them be fraud more than harassment, because your profile is like a synthetic being? There is this thing out there that stands in for you–it tells everyone who you are and connects you to the people you know, but in Invasion of the Body Snatchers style, it can be jacked and then suddenly, it does not represent you. It does not communicate what you want it to and you have no control over that. Perhaps the charge should be identity theft?

Of course, yes, in this case, it was harassment, but I certainly see the case for identity theft, but, perhaps, this is just semantics?

Tweeting into the Echo-Chamber (Or, The Oily Bird Gets the Worm… to Un-Apologize)

(Audio courtesy of Deadwood.)

I’ve long been fascinated by the art of the apology, or in some instances, the spectacular lack thereof. Case in point: a couple of weeks ago, Texas Republican Congressperson Joe Barton notably apologized to the corporate heads of BP in the wake of White House pressure to secure from the company a $20 billion payback fund. Soon thereafter, he retracted that apology… then later retracted his retraction… and then I got bored following the story, so who even knows the apology’s status as of this writing? The  malum discordiae for such tone-deaf flip floppery? According to Steven Andrew’s Examiner article “How to Use Twitter to Make Friends and Influence People,” it had an awful lot to do with Twitter*:

Literally before the GOP leadership and the conservative media fully realized what Barton had said, much less had time to think about the consequences, Barton’s comments and the GOBP idea had already ripped through twitter like wildfire and the narrative was set. The Republican establishment, their clumsy Fox News and talk radio dinosaurs rendered useless, panicked and ran for the exits.

Now that the traditional rightwing echo chamber has been knocked back on its heels by this unanticipated blast of disruptive feedback, it’ll be interesting to see how the “tweet factor” is accounted for in the future… And if Barton will eventually retract the retraction of the retraction.

* And maybe a little of this, too.

I Like To Play!

via facebook. Thanks Chris!

Proving You’re Human

Are you human? from GDFB.tv on Vimeo.

Captcha is a necessary evil. It takes up time and makes users go through more steps than they’d necessarily want to in order to do whatever it is that they want to do: post a comment, sign up for a service, etc. Without it, though, one’s site can fill up with all kinds of spammers. What makes this project so interesting is the application of proving one’s humanness in the physical world. What does that communication of something purely technological into a physical presence convey to passers-by? Do they get it? How do you prove that you’re human in this situation? There is no input field. I would love to see someone interact with this. Maybe they could break it apart to form a real word or copy the captcha below it. Well, something more interesting and creative than that would be better, but I think the captchas are just begging to be played with.

via F.A.T.

WB rips anti-piracy tech

Since we talk about remix culture so much on this blog, I felt the need to point out Gizmodo’s article, “IRONY: Warner Bros. Sued for Pirating Anti-Pirating Technology.” Really.

I think this is the stuff that would make Brett Gaylor, the director of RiP: A Remix Manifesto, giddy in its hilarity. I think we all can appreciate the irony, though.