Trust Me, I’m Lying – Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday is a brilliant book about the online media landscape, and how it is driving public discourse in a very bad direction. Ryan has a very interesting background, having worked in marketing and being part of the problem he describes. In his work, he has exploited the weaknesses of the new media landscape to get stories into blogs, press, and often national television. Stories about his clients, to get them attention and ultimately business. In this book, he describes what he did, how he did it, and why we as a society have a big problem. It has changed the way I read online media, and made me a lot more critical of things I previously did not take notice of.
Tag: BBC
Nudge Theory and Graphical User Interfaces
Nudge theory is an intriguing fairly new take on how to manage societies and modulate the behavior of people to make them behave in a “better” way. My layman’s interpretation of the idea is that instead of threating punishment and setting up rules, you try to encourage desired behavior with rewards and discourage undesired behavior by making it require an effort. When working with the new Test Runner view in the Simics 4.8 GUI, I realized that we had invented exactly such a nudge.
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