How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist — The Startup — Medium
I’m an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities. That’s why I spent the last three years as a Design Ethicist at Google caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people’s minds from getting hijacked.
When using technology, we often focus optimistically on all the things it does for us. But I want to show you where it might do the opposite.
Where does technology exploit our minds’ weaknesses?
This past year there was a debate about the game Clash of Clans, which became very heated when I showed how the game requires no skill to play, and is based on manipulating the user into paying for upgrades. This obviously works, with estimates that Clash of Clans brings in $5 million per day (yes, day!).
