{"id":52,"date":"2011-11-21T01:39:26","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T06:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/?p=52"},"modified":"2013-05-09T20:30:19","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T00:30:19","slug":"in-defense-of-friction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/2011\/11\/in-defense-of-friction\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Friction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is no doubt that technology has made my life much easier. I rarely share the romantic view that things were better when human beings used to do the boring tasks that machines now do. For example, I do not think there is much to gain by bringing back the old telephone operators. However, there are reasons to believe <strong>social computing systems should not automate social interactions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Telephone_operators,_1952.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/5\/50\/Telephone_operators%2C_1952.jpg\/196px-Telephone_operators%2C_1952.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"196\" height=\"240\" \/><!--more--><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mitpressjournals.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1162\/DAED_a_00114\">paper about online trust<\/a>, Coye Cheshire\u00a0points out how automated trust systems undermine trust itself by incentivizing cooperation because of the fear of punishment rather than actual trust among people. Cheshire argues that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>strong forms of online security and assurance can supplant, rather than enhance, trust.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Leading to what he calls the <em>trust paradox<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>assurance structures designed to make interpersonal trust possible in uncertain environments undermine the need for trust in the first place<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My collaborators and I\u00a0found something similar with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1826825\">attribution and credit<\/a>:\u00a0when borrowing someone else\u2019s creative work (remixing), automatic attribution given by a computer system, does not replace the manual credit given by another human being. Attribution is a useful piece of information given by a system, while credit given by a person is a signal of appreciation.<\/p>\n<p>Others have noted how Facebook\u2019s birthday reminders have \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/dave-pell\/facebook-has-ruined-birth_b_643644.html\">ruined birthdays<\/a>\u201d by \u201ccommoditizing\u201d social interactions and people&#8217;s social skills. Furthermore, recently some have argued that &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/news.cnet.com\/8301-31322_3-57324406-256\/how-facebook-is-ruining-sharing\/\">Facebook is ruining sharing<\/a>&#8221; by making it frictionless.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/7804014@N08\/1435327123\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1433\/1435327123_962bfc758a_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"171\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by atownjacket (c)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In many scenarios, automation is quite useful, but with social interactions, removing friction can have a harmful effect on the social bonds established through friction itself. I am not sure if sharing has indeed been ruined by Facebook, but perhaps this opens new opportunities for online services that allow people to have &#8220;friction-full&#8221; interactions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is no doubt that technology has made my life much easier. I rarely share the romantic view that things were better when human beings used to do the boring tasks that machines now do. For example, I do not think there is much to gain by bringing back the old telephone operators. However, there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3887,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2763],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooperation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3887"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}