So, again another quote, it says to tell your friends exactly that I like this.
So, this was said by this lady here who was on the design team of the like button that
you see in Facebook ok.
So, this, so these were the, these are the thoughts and the efforts that have gone in
into developing this interface that you and I know off today.
So, it is another statement everyone is distracted all of the time.
Again an associated comment.
So, this is by Mister Rosenstein who was in the design team of the like button.
So, there is actually a cora post that you can find which traces the history of the development
of the like button.
So, previously it was thought of being an awesome button and then it moved on took on
various guises and now it is called the like button.
These are the guys who have designed it and now they actually have people whom they have
hired to make sure that they do not spend too much time on it.
Perhaps this speaks something about the drawing power of the social networking sites, ok.
Another one now this is where it gets really scary, but I want you to read this.
So, this is ok, let us see if you can take a guess on who could have perhaps done it.
So, when you text a friend a congratulations, iMessage you get confetti falling on the top.
So, this remember all this is still on your cell phone right this is all virtual we are
not talking about real confetti that is falling.
This is called UI sugar, user interface sugar ok.
These things they are being taken to a whole new level when you are using bakery related
metaphors and you know designing technologies on your smartphone apps.
So, this statement was made by Doctor Combs who has a PhD in neuro-economics and he is
the founder of a company known as Dopamine labs.
If you actually look at this website it is called used dopamine dot com.
This is a website of the company that he founded.
They actually have a 10 or 15 page pdf document that lists the case studies of companies that
have used their application.
So, if you actually look at that case studies document that you on their website he gives
you a lot of the fancy numbers oh there is like a 50 percent increase in the number of
people who spend time on my side, on my app for in different domains healthcare, it could
be you know various other things.
So, the repeat customers for for this person seem to be in the healthcare domain you know
you have apps, that will manage how many steps you have walked in a day or you know whether
you have taken your meals on time and what have you eaten this day and so on.
So, these this app that was founded by this particular company enables you to the idea
is that it enables the user in making sure that these targets are met.
The question is how what is the premise of designing these add on applications, is there
a science to it.
He also has another company called space, where he provides the solution to make sure
that you do not spend too much time on these sites ok.
So, he he is addressing both sides of the coin.
He is giving you a provision where you spend more time on your app he is also giving you
a solution that will you away from these things.
So, in that technology for you if you will and what people can actually do with it.
Yeah, you had a question.
long history and advertising industry . I do not deny that.
Say again I do not deny that at all, but what is crucial here is the rate at which we are
able to consume it.
See your advertisements were you know they run for 30 seconds and you know maybe you
do not see it for another hour and now you know that you know if you like let us say
you are any of these cable TV channels you know that when you know when an add comes
on you can switch to another thing and sometimes these guys even give you a timer at the beginning
you know timer at the top that says how many more seconds are left before your next series
or whatever you are watching starts.
So, these are queues, these are queues that are provided and you can you can turn them
off right, I mean you can switch your channel which is what I am sure you invariably do
like in between overs in a cricket match you know that there is going to be an ad, so you
will switch to something else.
But these technologies that you find on your smart phones do not have any of those things,
there is nothing that says ok stop doing this.
So, I am I seem to be providing a very dystopian view of silicon valley in general you know
what social networking sites have actually made people or what state they have got them
in, but there are also people who are providing the necessary checks and balances.
And one of these is Mister Harris he is being termed as the conscience of the silicon valley
he was actually with Google a for a long time and he published a memo which basically raise
these concerns.
His idea was look why is it that we are spending so much time on these on these sites, on these
devices and this person actually has some solutions.
You can look at his website that I have cited here to see the various solutions
that he offers in order to make sure that the use of these social networking sites does
not have to be addictive.
He even he even gives guidelines for technologists and user interface designers in how do you
ensure that these these sites are actually not addictive as they currently are.
So, he calls his iphone a slot machine in my pocket.
So, you can see the direct relationship between what the development of gambling machines
and what you have these days on your social networking sites.
This is the case study bit about I am bringing the relation between an extensive study that
was done in the domain of gambling and its analogies and similarities in social networking
sites.
Now, let us try to understand why is it that technology has been so successful in actually
making sure that this happens.
So, from this now we will be ok, before before that there is just one slide on the social
science aspects of these devices.
Some of the theories that have been proposed by social scientists themselves is the transactions
between humans and machines that unfold at a greater level of intimacy ok.
So, this is how technology has has the point which technology has come and this enables
them to create a personal buffer zone against the uncertainties and worries of the world
ok.
So, we have seen all those statements that were made by gamblers in the first few slides,
people said I want to be in a trance leave me alone I want to get lost in it and so on.
So, why is it that from a social science point of view, why is it that what is it that these
technologies are contributing and why are they doing this.
Why is it that gamblers or people on on social networking sites take to it like fish to water
ok.
Then again from our socio technical point of view the assemblage as my colleague called
it.
So, they hold players in a state of uninterrupted motion to a channel experiential effect.
So, it is all about your experiences.
So, that was an earlier point that I heard is the technology companies want to engineer
experiences and this is by effects ok.
So, hence the title of my talk is affected feedback.
So, the feedback that you get from these either the gambling machines all your social networking
site is affected it is not natural to something that has been developed by through technology
ok.
So, it is about experiential effect and again if you look at it from a capitalism point
of view its again distinguished by deriving value on on these effects.
Like Google or any of these companies or even Facebook does not charge you to be a part
of the of the system right there is no money that is involved, you know you are not paying
anything out of your pocket, but they give you experiences.
They tell you what your friends are doing, what your family is doing, all the photos
that they have uploaded and so on, and out of which they derive monetary value ok.
So, again this again ties in very closely with the privacy issues, what data it is that
you are sharing with each of these sites, your your notion of identity when you when
you share such data whether advertently, inadvertently we do not know.
So, seems like these guys have a lot going in for them you know there is a lot at stake.
Even though they provide these services for free and that seems to be what, again like
people who who look at it from our capitalism point of view have their opinions on these
on these topics.
So, this is I think something that is again slightly more profound.
Just leave it leave it to you to read it, but the the only thing that I want to bring
your attention to here is they express the social forms that are capable of generating
them and using them.
So, it is not that somebody is actually enforcing you to use these new technologies, but it
is what society wants ok, it is what you and I want which has led to the development.
Now, imagine you are you are traveling somewhere and you have a 2G connection, but you want
to check your Facebook I am sure you will be like really irritated because it is so
slow your photos are not loading.
And look at those even the advertisements that companies seem to be bringing out these
days you know you have an elderly couple maybe as old as my parents who are traveling somewhere
and some company says I will give you 4G coverage wherever you are so that you can share all
your photos and so on.
So, it seems to be a requirement more from our side, from our social side rather than
simply a bunch of technologists or mathematicians sitting somewhere and saying look this is
what is good for you.
So, it is a colluding, it is an act of collusion both between society which needs
these things as well as the people who are actually able to supply them.
So, again this is a social science element because you know we are trying to work in
an inter interdisciplinary effort cannot be just people working in silos, what lessons
can we learn from these observations in actually the development of systems ok.
So, we will now move on to some hard science, basically from behavioral psychology and
bit from neuroscience.
So, why is it that these technologies have actually been so successful?
This is primarily because of a lot of fundamental research that was done in the topic of behavioural
psychology primarily called operant conditioning.
So, in operant conditioning there are several terms that are typically used there is reinforcement
there are reinforcers and a system that was actually developed to demonstrate this idea
of operant conditioning is the Skinner Box. Skinner was a psychologist who was a on the
faculty of Harvard for a very long time and these ideas were actually demonstrated in
about 1920s I have a small video that will kind of explain what these things do.
So, the idea here is that an organism learns from the consequences of it is own actions
ok.
So, this is the premise of operant conditioning.
So, a dog will stand on command if it had been fed before and then asked to stand.
So, the queue here, the reinforcer here is the dog is given food and then it has asked
to stand and then the next time you ask it to stand the hope is that it will get that
same food that it actually enjoyed in the past.
So, a rat pressing a lever in the box to obtain food, this is the most primitive example of
a skinner box.
And what has been observed here is that each time the rat presses the lever and get
some food to eat.
All it does after some time is it just keeps pressing the lever continuously.
So, the time difference between each press of the lever reduces considerably and at some
one of time all it does is just keeps pressing the lever.
So, this has been termed as a law of effect which was actually termed this was proposed
much earlier than the skinner this was by another gentleman called Professor Tyndall.
So, this was this can be cited here.
So, here I have a video, it is about 2 minutes long, but I think you will find it
interesting.
Can pigeons read this one gives every indication because it is been taught to distinguish between
two words to behave appropriately.
He is learned his different response to each sign by being rewarded with food.
So, the bird is not acting independently, its behaviour is shaped by controlling its
environment.
The first task was to isolate an individual piece of behaviour and see how that could
be changed skinner did this by keeping individual pigeons at about three quarters of their normal
weight.
So, that the birds were always hungry and food could be used as an automatic reward.
The pigeon was studied in a uniform box when it quickly grew used to one piece of behaviour
pecking.
A coloured disc was measured on a graph.
The pigeon learned picking the disk produced a reward then the behaviour of pecking could
be studied in relation to how often that reward was offered when skinners terms what was the
schedule of reinforcement.
Main thing is what is what we call schedules of reinforcement reinforcement what the calls
reward and you can schedule it.
So, that a reward occurs every now and then when a pigeon does something.
We usually use a response with the pigeon pecking a little disk spot on the wall and
you can reinforce with food, but you do not reinforce every time you are every perhaps
every tense time or perhaps only once every minute or something like that there are very
large number of schedules and they have their special effects.
And there is a good example of how you can move from the the pigeon to the human case
because one of the one of the schedules is very effective with the rats for pigeons is
what we call the variable ratio schedule and what is at the heart of all gambling devices
and has the same effect.
The pigeon can become a pathological gambler just as a person can now the fact that we
found that out with pigeons and could prove it by removing and changing the schedule makes
it easy for us to interpret the case with human subject we we do not say that the human
subject gambles to punish himself as the audience might say for gambles because it
feels excited when he does so, nothing of the sort.
People gamble because of the schedule of the reinforcement that follows and this is cool
all gambling system they all had variable ratios built into them , but what we have
learned from the pigeon it made it possible to interpret this fast field very effectively.
So, you saw that was Professor Skinner himself giving that talk.
So, this is actually what I have shown you here is only half of the entire video and
I have done that on purpose
So, that moving later, moving in a little ead you can actually see the other part
of the video.
So, what you could see here in in the brief interview that you saw the process skinner
is the concept of the reward system ok.
So, when the pigeon pecked at the red dot you know it would get food.
And you also saw the earlier part where you think that the pigeon could read based on
whether you showed peck or turn or whatever.
So, like this, this is this is what is conditioned behaviour ok and all this is enabled primarily
by rewards which are both positive and negative.
Now, the more, most important thing that bur that was found in these experiments is the
question of schedules of reinforcement.
So, the idea that was found was if you keep giving a reward continuously after some time
nobody is really bothered about it.
I mean you know that if you press a lever you will get food.
So, you just press a lever only you say when you are hungry and not compulsively ok.
So, here we are talking about compulsive behaviour and that is where the variable ratio schedules
of actually giving a reward becomes very important.
So, slot machines and social networking sites basically follow this variable ratio schedule
you do not know what is going to happen next.
I mean that is why we are always in this mad rush to either press the like button or upload
a photo or whatever it is.
It is not something that happens continuously.
Like even the behaviour is only reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses
there is definitely an average.
But it is not something that follows a fixed pattern ok.
So, what are the sort of rewards that are expected?
So, it could be in the form of sound or something that is pleasing to the eye and so on. and
in the case of gambling machines the thing that was observed is the concept of a near
miss, which I explained to you what it was you saw those reels that were spinning in
the video.
If you actually read this particular paper they talk about how the technologies that
have been used in the development of slot machines can also be used in the play in the
design of casual games, you know all your video games multiplayer games that you that
you find these days.
So, I think that video was quite self explanatory to give you a behavioural psychology background
to why is it that gambling machines and social networking sites have been so successful in
keeping us hooked into using them for a long time.
So, there are also several addiction theories that have been that have been proposed to
explain why can we can we understand and explain these behaviours.
So, here are a few of them.
So, the something known as a withdrawal based theory there is aberrant learning and incentive,
sensitization.
So, withdrawal base basically says that look a person has actually tried this drug or the
use of these sites before and now there is a certain amount of withdrawal and there is
a displeasure that is associated when you are in withdrawal ok.
And in order to ensure that you do not face that discomfort again you go back to keep
on using this ok.
So, this is negative reinforcement.
Now, the simplest example that again can give for positive or negative reinforcement is
sometimes when I play with my son, when he does a good job you know maybe when
he is colored his his drawings very neatly I may say he is very good I may give him a
chocolate or something like that that is positive reinforcement.
So, next time he is given the same task he would do it well because I know that he knows
that you know I want to tell him that he is done a wonderful job.
Negative reinforcement on the other hand which is something that people work towards avoiding
is say when I talk to him in a very stern voice you know or I scold him because he is
done something naughty Now, he wants to make sure that I do not take
that tone of voice again or I do not become very strict with him again.
So, that is negative reinforcement.
So, people change their behaviours in order to ensure that one of these two things happens,
either you want to feel your reward should be positive in nature which makes you feel
happy which is why we the which is why the designs of these technologies have been
so successful.
On the other hand you also have negative reinforcement you want you do not want to feel uncomfortable
for a very long time and then you go back and get the same high for a long time.
So, again aberrant learning is again another theory where it says that the actual neural
circuits in our brain become altered with repeated use of some maybe a drug.
In this case these were these have been proposed in the context of actual chemical
drugs, but we can see now a very close look similarity between drugs that were that have
been manufactured chemically as well as technologies themselves in giving you the same highs ok.
The other one, I have kept this at the very end because this now gives me a connection
to the final part of the lecture which is on the neuroscience background to explaining
addiction is the so called insensitive, incentive sensitization theory which says that there
are two distinct areas in the brain one is called wanting, the other is liking.
And when we have compulsive behaviours or one way to explain addiction is that the wanting
part of the neural circuits in a brain becomes become more stronger.
So, you really do not like what you are doing, but you want to do it forever reason.
There are changes that that that get affected in the in the neuronal circuitry primarily
this has been identified as the as the part of the brain which sees the most change.
So, this is the mesolimbic dopamine systems.
So, this is now my connection to the neuroscience part of the lecture where we can.
So, behavioural psychology again helps us understand why these things happen to some
extent I mean, you saw the last line by in the in the talk that we just saw.
So, where he says that look I can explain behaviour simply based on changing the schedules
of reinforcement can we go a level deeper and try to understand why is it that the human
brain actually acts the way it does in acting on these variable reinforcements and what
we find is that the culprit to all these issues that we see here is dopamine ok.
So, this is now my connection to the neuroscience part where we try to explain why is it that
this happens.
So, research has identified that the dopamine which is a tran, neurotransmitter in the brain
is connected to the reward system ok.
So, this is something that is generated that it is a chemical that is released in the brain
and this is what makes you feel happy.
So, dopamine and its associated systems in the human brain is what has been identified
as the reward systems.
This is basically what makes you feel happy, the release of these particular neurotransmitters,
and now you can see the connection between the name of the company that the neuro economists
that I had mentioned earlier.
His name of his company is actually dopamine labs ok, and dopamine is a neurotransmitter
that is a part of the reward system although it forms a very very small part of the brain
in comparison with the other things.
It is what actually drives us to do many things.
And it has been identified that this is also related to so called human intelligence the
way you and I know it today.
The release of these neurotransmitters evolution has taken take has brought us to
the stage where it is the release of these neurotransmitters that has enabled us to come
to where we are.
You remember that the picture that Professor Manohar had presented earlier about the chimpanzee
holding a sharpened stick.
So, he said that the monkey actually throws it away after it has used it right, it does
not use it anymore after it has eaten its fill.
Have you seen as throwing away any of the tools or the instruments that we have used?
No, because we know that if we use them again we will get some reward.
And this is where the whole point of memory and learning and all these issues are tied
in together along which the the dopamine systems, the dopamine reward systems in our
human brain which enables us to keep on doing the same thing for a very long time ok.
So, the this particular neurotransmitter is typically released when you have stimuli
which could be in the form of very tangible rewards like food or water it is also and
other such and other such rewards and then there is a suppressed activation in the case
of other stimuli.
So, this is you know what we call as negative reinforcement something that you do not want
to do something that you do not like in such cases there is not much of an activation of
this particular neurotransmitter.
This is an equation that has been identified to that has been proposed to explain
the release of this particular neurotransmitter there is a reason why I have it, I have this
here.
So, if you look at the phrases say the responses reward occurrence minus reward prediction
ok.
So, I will come into trying to explain the theories that are that have been proposed
in the context of prediction in the human brain.
So, neuro, the dopamine has been identified to follow some sort of an internal clock ok.
So, if at some point of time a stimulus is is produced and then there is an associated
reward with that say after a certain time duration, that time duration is actually recorded
in our brain somehow and the dopamine is released again when that same stimulus is presented
after the same interval of time, the neurotransmitter is released because it knows that this is
what is going to happen.
You can play how acquit this by changing the schedules.
You do not give it at exactly the same amount of time, you delay it, you vary the time when
this reward is actually given and this is what affects your dopamine response.
In the case of learning, when the human organism has actually learnt that if I do these things
this is the reward that I am going to get over a certain time interval.
If the time of occurrence and the time of prediction is the same you can see that the
response is basically zero, I am not going to I am not going to feel happy if I know
that this is going to be fairly predictable when I get the rewards for this particular
and I have predicted that it will happen at this amount of time.
But when you vary the ratio that is when you will see changes in the dopamine response,
and this has been investigated experimentally using the using the latest techniques that
are available and there are strong results, strong correlations which show that it is
these systems that basically have brought us to where we are today and this is what
technology has been has been using in order to make sure that you know people spend
a lot more time on these devices.
So, the activation has also been seen in near miss situations.
So, if I told you that the the virtual stops on these gambling machines have were
chosen in such a way that you get a near miss feeling, it is like you almost won, but you
are not there it there is experimental evidence to show that dopamine as always is released
which enables us to you know plan our future actions.
You can find a lot more information in these in these papers, I have selected these particular
papers because to some extent they do not get into very very complicated details
about the various aspects of human brain.
But they give kind of a birds eye view of the various systems that are that are there,
that have been identified in the human brain to explain such activities primarily related
to dopamine.