Reflection: Enchanted Objects – Design Human Desire and the Internet of Things by David Ross – Kalkidan Fikadu

Enchanted objects as their given name suggests are objects with extraordinary capabilities. The difference between these objects and objects we read about in fantasy novels is that enchanted objects are ordinary objects with additional technological improvement. Ross in his talk mentions that enchanted objects are designed to be visually attractive, with big eyes and child like features. Most enchanted objects give feedbacks as output. For Instance, a house power controller designed to turn red when the power consumption of a house reaches the maximum, trains residents of the house to be cautious of their increasing consumption of energy. I think enchanted objects can be very useful to train ourselves to act in a certain way at certain times. The more training we get, the more our actions become thoughtless and effortless. A person who turns off the light after getting negative feedback from a power controller, after some training, will have a sense of “knowledge” about his/her energy consumption. When watching the video, one question that came to my mind was: can enchanted objects be used for behavioral conditioning or learning? After all, most of enchanted objects implementations are based on a reaction/response to stimuli.

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