Pavlov Poke is a device that boosts productivity by way of giving electric shocks to social networking addicts and people who are crazily hooked on to the online community.
I know the name of the device rings a bell and yes it is named after the famous Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov who is known for his conditioned reflexes experiment.
Tired of wasting their time on Facebook, two MIT doctoral candidates Robert R. Morris and Dan McDuff have created this keyboard accessory that sends electric shock waves whenever the user spends too much of time online - "email, social networking, or other online distractions".
Morris shared on his blog, "I would be on Facebook, gorging on pet photos, stuck in some weird hypnotic trance, and it would be minutes or even hours before I realized I had no desire to be there in the first place. After a few shock exposures, these automatic behaviors seemed completely rewired. I no longer visited the site unless I wanted to… I still visited the site, but I wasn't dragged there by some mysterious Ouija-esque compulsion."
If you are wondering about the intensity of the shock, then yes the shock waves are not dangerous but are strong enough to make anyone react. Morris has noticed a "significant reduction" in his personal Facebook use.
The device has already been caught in the whirlpool of controversies but both Morris and McDuff have assured that this is just a art/design project. The duo has shared, "While this project is intended to be a joke, we believe a serious discussion is needed about how communication technologies are designed."
Checkout this video below to know more about Pavlov Poke:
One thing for sure if this product does ever hits the market, it would be the best-selling product, sad it won't! There are a lot of Facebook addicts who might benefit from this product.
In case you are looking for a less painful method then how about having a total stranger call you up and yell at you?
Sounds interesting, right? But this duo has designed a system that automatically hires a paid crowd-worker to call you up and yell at you whenever you spend to much time on any particular website. "If you exceed your Facebook quota, our code automatically posts a job on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service. The job is simple – workers call your number and then yell at you, reading from a pre-written script designed to be maximally humiliating" shares Morris.
Well, this too is designed as a joke but the duo did hire some workers and paid them $1.40 and yell at them.
Checkout the video below:Morris and McDuff have really done a great job coming up with these two incredible ideas. At least these ideas were compelling enough to force most of us into thinking about ways to curb our social networking addiction.
How do you plan to curb your social networking addiction? Do share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Stay tuned for more interesting updates from E-junkie.
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