You’re not helping.

You can sign up to my irregular newsletter here

How business creates addictive tech - and our compliance to it.

Here’s a Venn diagram. Every piece which looks at influences into a presented behaviour or trend has to have a Venn diagram..

So, what does this rather basic diagram show? Well, I hope that it shows there are three main business influences on the creation of addictive technology which, individually and collectively have created a potential spiral of learnt behaviour, economic reliance and created a limitation of imagination.

Attention Driven Design. This is a result of our (digital) history. More specifically, the historical way in which digital platforms, products and applications have been monetised – selling advertising and gathering data – both of which generate more income when you gain more of people’s attention. These two (data and advertising) components are clearly understood and funded by investors – which only exacerbates their influence and of course our reliance on them as business drivers.

Wilful Blindness. This is a result of us and the working environment. By those of us that work within businesses and have very fundamental needs to meet. Mortgages, rent, bills and the greasy pole to work up. Because of these very human pressures and in many ways because of the organisations we work with we ignore what we know is not right. We instinctively know that creating pop-ups on our websites is wrong, we know that storing people’s email addresses when they haven’t completed a form is wrong. We know that our terms and conditions are set up to confuse. We know that our user journeys and functionalities are set up not to support but to sell and ‘persuade’ (sometimes at any digital cost). We know but – we have to pay the bills right? This can sometimes feed into our individual moral ‘compass’ – best shown by a statement such as “I know… but I have to keep a roof over my families head” – we justify and balance something we feel is not right with something that we feel is.  

Unintended Consequences. This is as a result of us not asking the right questions. Not wanting to support human behaviours. Not wanting to enable positive and individually-led actions. Facebook didn’t intend for beheading’s and terrorist attacks to be shown on its platform. Twitter didn’t intend to promote hate speech. Google didn’t intend for adverts for beer to be shown next to domestic abuse support group videos on YouTube. They just did not ask themselves the ‘right’ questions in the design stage – they were driven by attention driven design and by their staff being wilfully blind.  These can sometimes feed into the area of ethics – understanding and being comfortable with the potential outcome of our decisions and principles.

However there is a potential way forward – and, here is another Venn diagram which explains it…

Ahhh, there is not much difference I admit – only the rather pithy replacement of Addictive Tech with Humane Tech. It seems to rather over-simplify what and where the opportunities are and lay. Well, yes and no. I believe that the same causes of addictive tech are in fact the source of the solution and with most thoughtful approaches solutions do not hide in simple black and white responses but rather in the nuances in the grey of opportunity.

Attention Driven Design. Ok, lets start with the toughest influence and let’s approach it in a realistic manner. We are not going to change the approach that creates revenue for entire industries overnight, not even over maybe as long as a decade – but we must recognise that this approach is not sustainable. Different measures of ‘success’ for not just digital tech, but business and society as a whole will start to float to the public consciousness over time as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. It will take time, it could be caused by economic necessity which drives societal and cultural behaviour, but I think we would all recognise that change will occur in terms of success measures in one form. But not for a while – so for the short (and maybe medium) term at least Attention Driven Design is here to stay. I’d rather focus on how the other influences on addictive tech can drive change in attention design and addictive tech.

Wilful Blindness. Businesses cannot afford for complete ‘compliance’ from their workforce and frankly their workforce cannot afford to comply. The workplace (as we constantly are being told by LinkedIn noise merchants) will never be the same, careers will not exist, competition will come from everywhere – or at least from Amazon (irrespective of the market).

Individuals cannot afford to stay quiet and ignore pop-ups, ‘underhand’ (although not illegal) design and data gathering practices, persuasive approaches that are actually manipulative. Why? Because they themselves will be less reliant on their employer – they will have (through necessity) a more fluid work/life balance – maybe supported at some stage by the state. The reduction in reliance breeds a freedom of thought and an appreciation of the wider ‘whole’ – ones place in society, who they work for and why, and of course, “am I doing right” (which is a wider philosophical point for another day)?

Businesses will be under more pressure than at any time for the last 75 years. A rapidly shrunk economy, significant unemployment, reduced travel, broken supply chains, huge global uncertainty. They require un-compliance, they need wilful awareness – where something is broken, nefarious or disruptive – their employees must be encouraged to speak out. Where compliance was assumed, questions should be posed – constantly. The global economy is becoming ever more centered on fewer and fewer business ‘titans’ – everyone else simply cannot ignore and encourage internal compliance at the cost of doing the right thing.

Two historical aspects of business behaviour need to change to enable Wilful Blindness to be challenged and removed (thanks to Tim Signore for this insight.);

A) A dominant school (middle management) of legacy thinking.

B) A lack of true diversity and divergent thinking. AKA Thoughtful Challenge.

Unintended Consequences. Well here’s the starting point - let’s ask the right questions. By right questions I don’t mean – “How many of these can we sell?”, “How can we get people to use this?” – although they are valid. But rather, questions such as “How could this be manipulated?”, “What impact could a nefarious use of this have on someone’s mental/physical health?” could be asked.

Cennydd Bowles has highlighted some practical approaches to identifying unintended consequences such as developing ‘Persona Non-Grata’s – creating a profile of those who want to use your product/service/business to do harm. He also suggests ‘Provocotypes’ – the opposite of prototypes – where every ‘bad’ use of a product is designed into a version and tested. Cennydd also highlights four ethical questions which cover a range of philosophical approaches that if asked can identify unintended consequences – I also think that they can feed through to addressing potential occurrences of wilful blindness;

A) What if everyone did what I’m about to do?

B) Am I treating people as ends or as means?

C) Am I maximising happiness for the greatest number of people?

D) Would I be happy for this to be a front page story?

Starting by asking the right questions in a wider context (i.e. including such considerations as societal, environmental and health impact) creates a more humane centered foundation on which to move forward from. We may not remove the addiction from our technology overnight but we can maybe start to make it more humane, step by step, question by question.

Let’s not be blind to it and our own true potential.