And just in case you think you may have misheard that, I’ll have you know that Mr. Brown is the CEO of the aptly – and rather bluntly – named Dopamine Labs. Yup, this outfit aims to “hack user engagement and retention using models from neuroscience,” “change … human behavior with unprecedented ease,” and “rewire user behavior and drive your KPIs.” Charming.
Of course, there’s all sorts of palaver about using it only for good … But it does sound, though, like their honesty may have provided us with something of an honest-to-goodness smoking gun when it comes to the motivation behind tech addiction.
I mean, we’re all familiar with the classic quote, “If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product.” Now, that's not exactly something that can be traced back to Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg, right?
But here, we have a quote that we can trace directly back to a VC-funded Silicon Valley outfit. They’re certainly no Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat ... at least, at this point.
What is he actually talking about? Why, intermittent reward, of course. What’s that? Well, it’s a psychological principle that dates all the way back to B.F. Skinner. It basically states that if you never get a reward, you’ll give up; if you always get the same reward, you’ll eventually get bored; but if you get a reward seemingly randomly, you’ll get hooked. It’s the idea behind slot machines … and email, and Facebook, and all sorts of social media and tech in general.
The dopamine connection? It’s the neurotransmitter that drives all this. Though many people mistakenly identify dopamine with pleasure, it actually drives seeking behavior.
And this basic human chemical – one that we are largely unaware of, have no control over, but that drives large parts of our behavior – has been hacked by Silicon Valley to make rich people richer, with no real thought to any of the consequences or ethics involved. Charming indeed.
This is either B.F. Skinner or some kind of space alien
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