Saturday, January 22, 2011

The man who lied to his laptop

I recently read the most delightful book, The Man Who Lied to His Latop. I hope that it becomes a of business and technology classic, because it certainly deserves to be.

The central thesis of the book is that human beings are social creatures and that we react socially even when dealing with machines. It also seems that our social relationships with our computers teach us a great deal about our social relationships with out fellow human beings.

I especially recommend the chapter on teams and team building. It seems all those expensive trust building exercises would be better replaced with a weekly pizza party for teams who met their goals.

Professional communicators will be interested in the final chapter on persuasion. Nass talks a great deal about expertise and trust and how, of these two, trust is by far the more important factor.

Slashdot discussions here.

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