Architectures of Control

Architectures of Control is a fascinating blog about how items are designed to affect the behavior of people using them, from planned obsolescence where the desired behavior is a person to buying replacement object to the use of sideshow 'slimming mirrors' in clothing stores.

There are a lot of views one could take of these practices and techniques. (With the weasel words in brackets) mostly they are manipulative (subtle), dishonest (ingenious) and effective ways of separating people from money (helping customers decide what's best for them), or effecting (encouraging) changes in public behavior.

Such techniques raise deeper questions about society and capitalism as well, such as who gets to decide what is for the publics good (is the general public fit to decide?) and what should be expected of businesses. A common view seems to be that the responsibilities of businesses lie mostly with the supporting the interests of the shareholders, if a company can make more money through deceptive or unethical means - or even illegal means if repercussions will be negligible - then that is what it will do. The shareholders get to vote on company management, and if the organization is not generating as much money as it can management may be replaced or a competitor with fewer scruples may out compete an honest responsible organization. Thus businesses will be winnowed down in a fairly Darwinian way, tending towards large monopolies where possible.

Words like fair and honest are rather subjective, that may not matter when discussing the general case. Society benefits a great deal from big businesses (with some notable exceptions), despite their drawbacks which is why they are allowed to exist, and society's servant Government is supposed to mediate where interests of profit and public good come to loggerheads. (continues after the jump)

It doesn't appear to be working optimally, for the public or for businesses and their customers. Complicated and burdensome laws limiting thousands of possible unethical behaviors increase the cost of doing business. Those costs will be passed on to consumers and lower by many small increments purchasing power and overall quality of life. Such laws also give an advantage to businesses which can avoid or break the law. Imagein for a moment a judge in a big silly wig playing Whack-a-Mole. New shady practices pop up to replace those made illegal, and the EU's red taped gavel is brought down (bonk!) to proscribe them.

For example:

'Robert Kilroy-Silk currently an independent MEP, has raised the issue in the European Parliament of intentionally distorting mirrors in clothes stores, specifically Marks & Spencer' [source]

Retailers being forced to stop a dishonest practice is a good thing, but one more law won't make dishonest practices in general unprofitable to retail, there are literally thousands of techniques in use ranging from the outright criminal - such as bait-and-switch - to the benign or even positive, such as playing soothing, slow music in stores to distort customers sense of time.

Given the continuum of harm caused by such techniques, and their wide variety of implementations it's very difficult to decide categorically what is and is not acceptable, from any point of view. No combination of laws will suit all, if any, of the parties involved.

A better solution is to restructure society in such a way that public and commercial interests are simply not positioned against one another. Create a situation such that dishonest/illegal/environmentally unfriendly or otherwise undesirable business is less profitable than above board, radically honest enterprise.

An example: Drug dealing. The US and UK have spent billions of taxpayer money on a spectacularly failed 'War on Drugs'. In some parts of the US the penalty for possession of small amounts Mary Jane is greater than the penalty for murder. Yet the US is still one of the world's most profitable drug markets. Domestically produced marijuana is America's largest cash crop. Prohibition laws are making criminals out of ordinary people, creating organized crime and driving up the cost of weed to the consumer. The organized criminals involved are then in a better position to supply very dangerous substances to otherwise good citizens who are forced to deal with criminality to obtain more benign substances. It's a mess.

The US could quickly solve it's hard drug problem by making it unprofitable to sell them, where current laws restricting supply make it more profitable to sell hard drugs. How this could be done is by turning the market against suppliers and suppliers against each other. Granting an amnesty for users of hard drugs such that if users turn in hard drug dealers they will receive half of the money and drugs confiscated from a dealer, anonymously and no questions asked. In this way a user's addiction is turned against the dealer, giving addicts an opportunity to obtain drugs without resorting to crime themselves and while assisting law enforcement. Dealers are also encouraged to report on each other to obtain product cheaply and shut down rivals without violent turf wars. By making supply unfeasibly dangerous and costly, the flow of drugs to the market dries up, prices move out of the range of casual and first time users, and addicts eventually cannot obtain drugs from organized crime.

By legalizing less harmful substances such as as Marijuana and GHB the mob loses a highly lucrative industry, prices go down, quality goes up, and the government collects tax instead of spending it. Society wins in many different ways. There would also be negative consequences, especially at first, but overall the problem is solved, not fought.

A similar approach could be used for child pornography, or more common police tasks such as reducing underage drinking.

Getting back to architectures of control, they are currently employed almost exclusively by those who can afford to create them. Necessarily, consent is never asked of customers or the general public. No-one asks to be confronted by a huge great billboard advertising baby products, it is *imposed* on people, with the average person not having any means or real motivation to to oppose a daily barrage of advertisement using every lie, manipulation and psychological trick known to the ad industry. Fringe lunatics like myself occasionally boycott the worst offenders (ahem!, Sony) to no real effect.

In the current situation profit is directly related to brand awareness, it would be difficult for a company serving the public to be successful without a lot of costly advertisement. Those costs must be borne by consumers, USD 144.32 billion in the states alone in 2005 [source], money that could be spent on something of actual use to the world. For comparison, advertising costs the US population more than twice as much as current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here's an idea for an alternative: have one simple requirement for businesses; complete transparency. There is not yet a system in place for giving customers the information required to make informed choices about all purchases. The information consumers do get often comes from the businesses themselves and so is heavily biased if not fiction. Make a legal requirement for businesses to fully disclose to anyone who asks:

Cost of raw materials in money, electricity, water and carbon
Advertising budget and cost per unit of advertising
Average hourly wage and standard distribution of lower two quartiles of employees
Any current legal action against the company, for EPA violations, class action suits, etc
Secondary costs of products say electricity consumption, fuel efficiency, printer toner, etc
List of hazardous materials or materials that are not recyclable

Create a large fine for false or misleading information, and allocate half of that fine for any member of the public who can catch a business in a lie, making it worth the while of those interested in checking up on these data. This information should be made available on a website (any website) in a standard XML format together with the bar code for all products.

The data can then be aggregated in one or more wiki-style consumer websites, where community consensus can evaluate businesses on factors including responsible use of the environment, labor conditions, an objective evaluation of the quality and worth their product, recommended retail price and a list of equivalent products.

Consumers can instantly get reliable purchasing information on a product by punching the UPC number into a cell phone, and immediately know what the consensus 'fair' price is, whether it's 'real' orange juice, whether it tastes like gasoline, and what dodgy carcinogens it contains. If Conspicuous Consumer scans in a $200 pair of celebrity-endorsed sneakers and discovers that they were made for $5 by child slaves in some third world country, cost $70 to advertise and will fall apart in two years so he has to buy another pair, they may not be such an attractive status symbol, especially if the people they're meant to impress have ready access to that same information.

At the same time, a well-run company that produces a high quality product cheaply could get a deserved endorsement from the wiki site, increase profits, grow and prosper without excessive advertising. Companies could increase their score on the wiki by spending money on socially positive projects such as unaffiliated charities, refitting their plants for the benefit of employees and the environment, or voluntarily increasing their tax, rather than spending that same money on expensive ad agencies.

Consumers would have an incentive to use to use such a service in order to get the best use of their money, and companies would have incentive to co-operate with it and express their products and services honestly to customers or risk losing business. At the same time, businesses could also have an opportunity to increase sales by providing in XML form a list of outlets where their products can be bought. That data is then cross-referenced with map and geolocation data so that a consumer requesting information on a product can also be presented with a list of nearby stores where the product is available, and at what price. Retailers would also have incentive to publish their prices in this format to be included in the list, free advertising that empowers consumers, rewards better businesses and doesn't require a lot of dead trees for junk mail and newspaper space.

In short, the goal of the system is to create an environment where businesses providing real value and transparency are rewarded, as opposed to the current status quo where businesses that can create the impression of value and an artificial positive image are rewarded.

Obviously one website is not going to fix the world's problems, but it could be a sea change, and is possible on current technology. Most consumers own a cellphone that can already display summarized webpages and many have a camera that can probably be used for barcode recognition. Businesses are always seeking new markets and reduced costs, which this service could provide for those that earn a good reputation. Product Wiki is a good start, and a great resource, but it is integration with offline shopping vie phones, and objective measures of value of products and character of producers that can create a change in company behavior. An architecture of control created for and by consumers, for bending businesses to their interests, rather than the other way round. Win-win.

more: Microsuasion - Standford University
via: BoingBoing

Disclosure: I currently work in a marketing related job that involves production and distribution of unsolicited bulk mail (paper variety) and derive part of my income from advertising.

Created 2007-02-16 22:24:08 by 209 and filed under stuff