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screening methods were used to check everyone who came near the event.
Advanced sensors sniffed the air. 23
While discussing how computers or cyber technologies can be used
surreptitiously to communicate with members of a group, New York Times
reporter Tom Zeller wrote that
At one website, spammimic.com, a user can type in a phrase like “Meet
me at Joe’s” and have that message automatically converted into a
lengthy bit of prose that reads like a spam message: “Dear Decision
maker—Your email address has been submitted to us indicating your
interest in our briefing! This is a one-time mailing and there is no need
to request removal if you won’t want any more.” 24
The words are pasted into an email message and sent. The receiver of the email,
on the lookout for such a message, then pastes it into the machine’s decoder to
read the original message. 25 Thus the uses of computers and their related
activities are spreading and becoming more creative. Militaries and law
enforcement agencies are having a hard time staying ahead of this transnational
creativity.
Professor B.J. Fogg of Stanford University is a leader in a more
specialized use of cyber technologies, yet one most people haven’t thought
much about. It is the use of cyber technologies strictly for purposes of
persuasion. He runs a persuasive technology laboratory at Palo Alto, California.
Fogg and his staff are creating a “body of expertise in the design, theory, and
analysis of persuasive technologies, an area called ‘captology’.” 26 Dr. Fogg
introduces users to devices that remind, reward, or monitor behavior, and
thereby influence attitudes. 27 Persuasive technologies can induce flattery,
seduction, fantasy, competition, humor, positive reinforcement, and appeals to
the conscience. The difficulty, of course, is deciding what is persuasion and not
manipulation or coercion. 28 Dr. Fogg has written a book titled Persuasive
Technology that has two chapters of particular relevance–“Persuasion in the
Digital Age” and “Credibility and the World Wide Web.” These chapters, as
23 Sari Horwitz and Spencer S. Hsu, “Inaugural Security Draws on Latest
Technologies,” WashingtonPost.com, 10 January 2005, p. A1.
24 Tom Zeller, Jr., “On the Open Internet, a Web of Dark Alleys,” The New York
Times, 20 December 2004.
25 Ibid.
26 “Captology: Computers as Persuasive Technologies,” at
http://captology.stanford.edu.
27 Taken from http://captology.stanford.edu/Examples/examples.html.
28 Gary H. Anthes, “Persuasive Technologies,” Computerworld, 28 June 1999, p. 76.
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