Herding forecloses action alternatives to move behavior toward near-certain outcomes remotely.

Evidence

“Herding” is a second approach that relies on controlling key elements in a person’s immediate context. The uncontract is an example of a herding technique. Shutting down a car’s engine irreversibly changes the driver’s immediate context, herding her out the car door. Herding enables remote orchestration of the human situation, foreclosing action alternatives and thus moving behavior along a path of heightened probability that approximates certainty. “We are learning how to write the music, and then we let the music make them dance,” an “internet of things” software developer explains, adding, We can engineer the context around a particular behavior and force change that way. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 922

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘herding’ as the skill of controlling elements of a person’s immediate context to remotely orchestrate behavior.
• SEED: The ‘write the music, let the music make them dance’ quote is a potent hook for an essay on how IOT design treats human autonomy as a design parameter.
• SHARE: The ‘we write the music, the music makes them dance’ line is worth sending to anyone working on IOT or design ethics specifically.
• XREF: connects to: Social influence becomes a design mechanism for herding populations toward planned outcomes — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1364; Economies of action get institutionalized into automated algorithms that modify behavior — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 939; Surveillance platforms weaponize empathy and belonging to herd behavior commercially — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1492 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Social influence becomes a design mechanism for herding populations toward planned outcomes #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1364
• Surveillance platforms weaponize empathy and belonging to herd behavior commercially #exemplifies (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1492
• Economies of action get institutionalized into automated algorithms that modify behavior #expands (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 939
• Remote killing free from retaliation creates a moral hazard problem #exemplifies (0.72)