According to Denise Caruso's New York Times article most of us are being seduced through advertisements. Businesses have a very powerful weapon they use to get us to buy their products. Advertisements. And they use the best people around to play with our minds.
Persuasive technology is not a new idea. It has been used for decades. War propaganda was one of the first really effective ads used by the government. B. J. Fogg, a researcher at Sun Microsystems Inc. and a visiting scholar and lecturer in Stanford University's departments of computer science and communications, puts persuasive technology into three categories. These categories are tools, media, and social actors.
An example of social actors is Hewlett Packard's doll that is made to combat teen pregnancy, the Baby Think It Over doll. This doll is just like the dolls you carried around for a week in high school that constantly cried. The doll is supposed to simulate a real baby. Along with non stop crying the doll needs to be fed, cries when it is in the wrong position, and cries when it feels neglected. This doll will scare any teen into abstinence.
Fogg says the most interesting form of persuasion is what he calls seductive computing. Basically this is an ad that says "TRY ME!" An example of this is the screens in an arcade that persuade children to drop quarters into them. "These types of ads do not know when to shut up," said Fogg.
I think seductive advertising is getting better and better each day. I will admit I am one of the people that seriously considers buying a product after seeing the advertisement for it. The people making these ads are pulling you in without you even knowing about it.