Think about your own reaction. If you were by yourself, walking along the streets of a large city and encountered what looked like a crime, you might be frightened and, therefore, reluctant to intervene. Still, you probably would try to call for help. But suppose a crowd of people were watching the incident? What would you do then? You probably would assume that you weren’t witnessing anything serious, because if it were, people in the crowd would be doing something. The fact that nobody is doing anything must mean that nothing bad is happening. After all, in a large city, anything might happen: maybe it’s actors making a movie.
Bystander apathy works in security as well. Suppose that you are working as a technician at a power plant. Among your jobs, you are supposed to check the meter readings with one of your colleagues, another technician at the plant, a person you know and trust. Moreover, when you have finished, your supervisor will also do a check. The result is that you don’t have to exert extra care on the task. After all, how could a mistake get through with so many people? The problem is that everyone feels this way. As a result, the more people that check on something, the less carefully each person performs the task. As more people are responsible, security may diminish: trust gets in the way.
The commercial aviation community has done an excellent job of fighting this tendency with its program of “Crew Resource Management.” All modern commercial aircraft have two pilots. One, the more senior, is the captain, who sits in the left-hand seat, while the other is the first-officer, who sits in the right-hand seat. Both are qualified pilots, however, and it is common for them to take turns piloting the aircraft. As a result, they are referred to by the terms “pilot flying” and “pilot not flying.” A major component of crew resource management is that the pilot who is not flying be an active critic, continually checking and questioning the actions taken by the pilot who is flying. The pilot flying is supposed to thank the other for the questions, even when they are unnecessary, or even wrong. Obviously, getting this process in place was difficult, for it involved major changes in the culture, especially when one pilot was junior. After all, when one person questions another’s behavior, it implies a lack of trust; and when two people are supposed to work together, especially when one is superior to the other, trust is essential. It took a while before the aviation community learned to take the questioning as a mark of respect, rather than a lack of trust, and for senior pilots to insist that junior ones question all of their actions. The result has been increased safety.
Criminals and terrorists take advantage of misplaced trust. One strategy to break into a well-guarded place is to trigger the alarms repeatedly over the course of a few days, and then hide so that the security personnel cannot find any cause for the trigger. Eventually, in frustration over the repeated false alarms, the security people will no longer trust them. It is then the criminals break in.
Not everyone is untrustworthy, just a few—but those few can be so severely disruptive that we have little choice but to relinquish trust and be suspicious of everyone, everything. There is a terrible tradeoff here: the very things that make security tighter are often those that make our lives more difficult or, in some cases, impossible. We need more realistic security that is cognizant of human behavior.
Security is more of a social or human problem than a technological one. Sure, put in all the technology you like. Those who wish to steal, corrupt, or disrupt will find a way to take advantage of human nature and bypass the security. Indeed, excessive technology gets in the way of security, because, by making the task of conscientious, everyday workers more difficult, it makes the job of bypassing the security measures even easier. When the security codes or procedures become too complex, people can’t remember them, so they will write them down and post them on their computer terminals, under their keyboards or phones, or in their desk drawer (on top, though, where they are easy to get to).
As I was writing this book, I served on a committee of the United States National Research Council investigating information technology and counterterrorism. For my section of the report, I studied the social engineering practices used by terrorists, criminals, and other troublemakers. Actually, it’s not difficult to find this information. The basic principles have been around for centuries and there are many books by ex-criminals, law-enforcement officers, and even guides to writing crime novels that provide relevant information. The internet makes the research easy.
Want to break into a secure facility? Walk up to the door carrying an armload of computers, parts, and dangling cords. Ask someone to hold open the door, and thank them. Carry the junk over to an empty cubicle, look for the password and login name, which will be posted somewhere, and log in (figure 5.2). If you can’t log in, ask someone for help. Just ask. As one handbook that I found on the internet puts it: Just shout, “Does anyone remember the password for this terminal?” You would be surprised how many people will tell you.
FIGURE 5.2a and b How not to safeguard a password.
Figure a shows a note posted on the side of the computer display; figure b is an enlargement of the note. This is the sort of behavior that social engineers count on. But it is bad password policies that make us have to resort to this. Even if the password wasn’t attached to the computer, a good social engineer could have guessed it: this computer is at the corporate headquarters of a major manufacturer of office furniture. “Chair”? Who would ever guess? (Photograph by author.)
In the end, security is a systems problem, where the human is the most important component. When security procedures get in the way of well-meaning, dedicated workers, they will find work-arounds to avoid disruption, thus defeating the whole point of the procedure. The very attributes that make us effective, cooperative, creative workers, able to adapt to the unexpected and to provide assistance to others, make us vulnerable to those who would take advantage of us.
Communications That Serve Emotion
Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
—Lucius Annaeus Seneca (5 BC–AD 65)
In my consulting work, I am often called upon to predict the next “killer application,” to discover the next product that will be so popular that everyone will have to own it. Unfortunately, if I have learned anything, it is that precise predictions of this sort are simply not possible. The field is littered with the bodies of those who have tried. Moreover, it is possible to be correct about a prediction, but very far off as to its time frame. I predict that automobiles will drive themselves. When? I have no idea: it might be twenty years, it might be one hundred. I predict that video telephones will become so popular that they will be everywhere, and we will simply take them for granted. In fact, people might complain if there weren’t any video. When? Forecasters have been predicting widespread adoption of video phones “in just a few years” for the last fifty years. Even successful products can take decades before they catch on.
But even if exact prediction of successful products is not possible, we can be certain of one category that almost always guarantees success: social interaction. Throughout the last one hundred years, as technologies have changed, the importance of communication has remained high on the list of essentials. For individual communication, this has meant mail, the telephone, email, cell phones, and instant messaging and text messaging on computers and cell phones. For organizations, add the telegraph, the corporate memo and newsletter, the fax machine, and the intranet, that specialization of the internet for intracompany communication and interaction. And for societal groups, add the town crier, the daily newspaper, radio, and television.
Up to a few years ago, the increasing ease and lowered cost of travel had the unfortunate side effect of weakening the bonds that hold people together. Yes, through letters and telephone people could still be somewhat in touch, but this touch was limited. Two thousand years ago the Roman philosopher Seneca complained that travel led to many acquaintances but few friends, and up to rec
ently this complaint still held true. Distance used to matter. Move away from family and friends, and the contact waned. Sure, one could use mail and telephone, but these were sparse communications amidst the busy activities of the day. People who separated physically would often separate socially and emotionally as well.
No more: today we can be in continual contact with friends and relatives no matter where we are, no matter the time of day. Today’s technology makes it possible to stay in touch with friends and family on a continual basis. Email, instant messaging, text messages, and voice mail have no barriers in time or distance. Travel is relatively easy by auto, train, or airplane. The mail system reliably traverses the earth. The telephone is readily available and, with the cellular phone, always with us, always on. Email is ubiquitous. Billions of short messages are sent daily among the cell phones of the world. The isolation once imposed by distance and separation is no longer true. Today we can easily keep in touch with one another to an amount undreamed of earlier. Moreover, the communication revolution has barely begun: if it is so pervasive now, at the start of the twenty-first century, what will it be in one hundred years?
Most of the short text messages appear to be content-free. Among teenagers, they are apt to say: “What are you doing?”—or, in the highly abbreviated form they often take, “watrudoin”; “Where are you? (wru)”; “See you later (cul8r).” Among business people during the business day, they differ slightly: “Boring meeting”; “What are you doing?”; “Want a drink after work?” Occasionally, of course, they have real substance, as in business negotiations or in arranging meeting times or the details of a contract. But, on the whole, the point of the frequent messages is not information sharing; it is emotional connecting. They are ways of saying to one another, “I’m here,” “you are there,” “we still like each other.” People need to communicate continually, for comfort, for reassurance.
The real advantage of text messaging is that it can be used while you are doing other things. As long as your hands are free and you can sneak an occasional look at the screen, you can send and receive messages: in class, at business meetings, or even while conversing with others. There seem to be no bounds. Stick the device in your shirt pocket. Then, when bored, or when that pleasant vibrating sensation on the chest signifies the arrival of a new message, take it out and peek. Read the latest words and surreptitiously type a reply, using two thumbs on the tiny keyboard. Surreptitiously, because this is probably taking place at a meeting, where you are supposed to be attending to the speaker.
The ability to use short text messages so effortlessly has become a strong, emotional component of many people’s lives. Numerous people who responded to my Internet request for experiences of bonding used the opportunity to tell me about their attachment to Instant Messaging (IM). Here are two responses:Instant messenger (IM) is an integrated part of my life. With it I have a sense of connection to many of my friends and colleagues around the world. Without it, I feel as though a window to part of my world is bolted shut.
Another example is IM. I am so attached to my IM at work. I can’t imagine my life without it. The real power of IM isn’t the message (though that is a key attribute), but it’s the presence detection. Knowing that someone “is there.” Imagine knowing that every time you pick up the phone to dial someone there is going to be a real person to answer, and the person you want. That is the power of instant messaging.
The cell phone shares much of the emotional power of text messaging. It is much more than a simple communication device. Oh, sure, business thinks of it as a way of keeping in touch, of getting critical information to people when they need it, but that misses the whole point of these devices. It is fundamentally an emotional tool and a social facilitator. It keeps people in touch with one another. It lets friends chat: even if the formal, reflective content is vague, the emotional content is high. But although it lets us all share thoughts and ideas, music, and pictures, what it really lets us share is emotion. The ability to keep in touch throughout the day maintains a relationship, whether it be business or social.
Speech is a powerful social and emotional vehicle because it enables communication of emotional state through its natural prosody—pauses, rhythm, pitch inflections, hesitations, and repeats. Although text messaging is not as effective as speech at communicating emotion, it is superior as a tool for communication because it is unobtrusive. It can be kept private and it can be done secretly. I am always amused at business meetings by the sneaky, but skillful, use of text messaging. I watch otherwise serious, staid executives glance furtively down at their laps so as to read screens and type responses, all the while pretending to be listening to the meeting. Text messaging lets friends keep in touch, even when they should be attending to something else.
Isn’t it strange that, although telephone service is an emotional tool, the appliance itself is not? People love the power of cell phone interaction, but do not seem to love any of the devices that make it possible. As a result, the turnover of devices is high. There is no product loyalty, no commitment to company or service provider. The cell phone, one of the most fundamentally emotional services, garners little attachment to its products.
Vernor Vinge, one of my favorite science fiction writers, wrote A Fire Upon the Deep, in which the planet Tines is populated by animals with a collective intelligence. These doglike creatures travel in packs, whose members are in continuous acoustical communication with one another, giving rise to a powerful, distributed consciousness. Individuals leave the pack because of death, illness, or accident, and new, young members are recruited to replace them, so that the pack maintains its identity far beyond that of any single individual. Each individual member of a pack lacks intelligence when all alone: the pack gains its intelligence through the collaboration of the many individuals. As a result, if an individual strays too far from the pack, the communication path is lost—for sound has limited range—and the resulting “singleton” is devoid of intelligence. Singletons rarely survive, and those that do are doomed to a mindless existence—literally mindless.
Walk down the street of any large city in any country of the world and watch the people who are talking on their cell phones: they are in their own space, physically adjacent to one location and one set of people but emotionally somewhere else. It is as if they fear being singletons in the crowd of strangers and opt instead to maintain connection with their pack, even if the pack is elsewhere. The cell phone establishes its own private space, removed from the street. Were the two people together, walking down the street, they would not be so isolated, for they would both be aware of one another, of the conversation and of the street. But with the cell phone, you enter into a private place that is virtual, not real, one removed from the surrounds, the better to bond with the other person and the conversation. And so you are lost to the street even while walking along it. Truly a private space in a public place.
Always Connected, Always Distracted
I HAVE watched phones ring and be answered in the most amazing places. In the movie theater, in the middle of board meetings. I once attended a meeting at the Vatican where I was part of a scientific delegation presenting our findings to the Pope. Cell phones were everywhere: each cardinal wore a gold chain upon which was hung a gold cross, each bishop had a gold chain upon which was hung a silver cross, but the head usher, who seemed to be the real person in charge, wore a gold chain upon which was hung a cell phone. The Pope may have been the center of attention, but I heard cell phones ringing continually throughout the ceremony. “Scusi,” they would whisper into their phones, “I can’t talk right now, I’m listening to the Pope.”
On another occasion I was a member of a discussion panel in front of a large audience, when the moderator’s cell phone rang just as he was in the middle of asking a question of one of the panelists. Yes, he answered it, disconcerting the panel members, but amusing the audience.
HURRAH FOR the communication technologies that allow us continuous contact wit
h our colleagues, friends, and families, no matter where we are, no matter what we are doing! But, however powerful text and voice messages, phone calls, and emails are as tools for maintaining relationships or supervising work, note that one person’s “keeping in touch” is another person’s interruption. The emotional impact reflects this discrepancy: positive to the person keeping in touch, but negative and disturbing to the person being subjected to interruption.
There is a lack of symmetry in the perceived impact of an interruption. When I have lunch with friends who spend a considerable fraction of our time responding to calls on their cell phones, I consider this a distraction and an interruption. From their point of view, they are still with me, but the calls are essential to their lives and emotions and not at all an interruption. To the person taking the call, the time is filled, with information being conveyed. To me, it is empty unfilled time. The lunchtime conversation is now on hold. I have to wait for the interruption to end.
How much time does the interruption seem to take? To the person being interrupted, forever. To the person taking the call, just a few seconds. Perception is everything. When one is busy, times flies quickly. When there is nothing to do, it seems to drag. As a result, the person engaged in the cell phone conversation feels emotionally satisfied, while the other feels ignored and distanced, emotionally upset.
Human conscious attention is a component of the reflective level of the mind. It has limited capability. On the one hand, it limits the focus of consciousness, primarily to a single task. On the other hand, attention is readily distracted by changes in the environment. The result of this natural distractibility is a short attention span: new events continually engage attention. Today it is customary to argue that short attention spans are caused by advertisements, video games, music videos, and so on. But, in fact, the ready distractibility of attention is a biological necessity, developed through millions of years of evolution as a protective mechanism against unexpected danger: this is the primary function of the visceral level. This is probably why one byproduct of the negative affect and anxiety that results from perceived danger is a narrowing and focusing of attention. In danger, attention must not become distracted. But in the absence of anxiety, people are easily distracted, continually shifting attention. William James, the famous philosopher/psychologist, once said that his attention span was approximately ten seconds, and this in the late 1800s, far before the advent of modern distractions.
Emotional Design Page 15