Comments on: Wondering about alarmapathy

By: FISHboy

FISHboy — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 21:43:49 +0000

Pop quiz: when did ANY of you take ANY notice of a car alarm?

By: enthusiasm : archive : » links for 2007-09-10

enthusiasm : archive : » links for 2007-09-10 — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 23:35:29 +0000

[...] Wondering about alarmapathy confused of calcutta ponders the proliferation of alarms and alerts in our lives, and our correspondingly greater disinclination to take any notice of them (tags: social-studies technology risk psychology) [...]

By: Alarmapathy at Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth)

Alarmapathy at Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 09:08:33 +0000

[...] JP is so right! [...]

By: Stu

Stu — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 08:08:45 +0000

this also reminds me of the seminal work of hans monderman, who applies similar ideas to traffic engineering:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html

By: JP

JP — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 04:39:29 +0000

Glad to hear I am not alone. It is not just the number of alarms, but also the fact that people don’t know what the alarm is for. And they find it hard to find out what it is for. We need fewer alarms and simpler ones.

By: Mike Seyfang

Mike Seyfang — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 03:24:44 +0000

makes me think of the design fault that allows timezone information to be embedded in so many portable devices!!

(I was once famous within Microsoft for being the ‘whinging Aussie with the TimeZone issues) – and have thought about the way software handles timezones and daylight savings transitions way too much!!

Fang – Mike Seyfang

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:56:17 +0000

JP, that was a nice bit of meditation; I think one way of summarizing the morale of the story is that, when there are too many things that demand a person’s attention, that person pays attention to none of them (hence the apathy).