memex

“Michael Brown, a research fellow at the University of Nottingham… [lead an] experiment focused on how increasing the availability of data about household members’ activity would impact their social dynamics[, each] participant wore a Fitbit motion sensor… Participants were quick to deduce how the technology was set up and how best to game the system… [The display was based in the home which also] meant that there was no ambiguity about who was in the house and when, which had implications for privacy and made for some uncomfortable interrelationships… For Brown, the most significant issue that the monitoring experiment introduced into all of the participating households was the removal of ambiguity that often smooths the wheels of relationships. ‘The big concern was that it removed the capacity for white lies. It removes socially useful ambiguity,’ says Brown.”